THE BUILDER MAGAZINE
november 1923
volume 9 - number 11
Present Day Tendencies and Dangers in Freemasonry
By Bro. LOUIS BLOCK, P.G.M., Iowa
We are living in an age when it takes but little urging to
spur a man to follow Paul's scriptural injunction to "Prove all things". In
fact, there never was a time when people were so ready to submit all things "the
acid test" even going so far as to jump at conclusions, and discard a thing
before the test is half done.
Not only are materials, machinery and methods being tried
in rapid succession, but the probe is being pushed into parties, governments,
societies, institutions, churches and fraternities. Nor can the Masonic
institution hope to escape trial along with the rest.
Has Masonry today any real excuse for its continued
existence?
Has it any solution to offer of the trying problems that
vex and harass not only the individual soul, but the soul of the world as well,
till one questions whether the game is worth the candle, or life worth living at
all?
Masonry can no more escape standing up to answer this
question than can any of the rest of human institutions that the modern world is
putting on trial.
Nothing does us quite so much good as to now and then take
stock of our institutions, to find out what they mean, and what they really
stand for.
To do that we must go back to first principles. We must
dig down to the foundation and find out upon what the thing is bottomed. The
world just now is showing a perfect passion for this sort of thing.
In the field of religion a great controversy is raging
between the "modernists" and the "fundamentalists". The former are for a freer
interpretation, for the loosening; of creedal chains, while the latter claim
that in going back to the ancient creeds they have gone down to the foundation,
although one is often tempted to wonder whether the true Foundation does not lie
far deeper than all the clashing creeds in a Great Life and a Great Love that
gave birth to a new Commandment, requiring not so much that we have belief, but
far more that we love one another.
Let us now go down to the foundation of Masonry, and find,
if we can, upon what sort of footing our building is based. We have been taught
from time immemorial that the design of the Masonic Institution was to make its
votaries wiser and better and consequently happier, that we should receive none
knowingly into our ranks but such as were moral and upright before God and of
good repute before the world. This was on the theory that such men when
associated together would naturally seek each other's welfare and happiness
equally with their own. In order that they might not become weary in well-doing
it furnished them with a great common platform upon which they might "meet upon
the level, act by the plumb, and part upon the square." It obliged them to that
great "Religion in which all men agree, leaving their particular opinions to
themselves; that is, to be good men and true, or men of Honour and Honesty, by
whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry
becomes the Center of Union, and the Means of conciliating true Friendship among
Persons that must have remain'd at a perpetual Distance."
That, we must all admit, is just about the broadest creed
to be found in all history, and it is upon the broad foundation of this "Ancient
Charge" that our beloved Institution is based. It is upon such a foundation and
in the spirit of Him, who said "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" that we
are taught to labour incessantly, making a persistent and proper use of the
Trowel, an Instrument used for the "noble and glorious purpose of spreading the
cement of brotherly love and affection, that cement which unites us into one
sacred band or society of friends and brothers among whom no contention should
ever exist, but that noble contention, or rather emulation, of who best can work
and best agree".
The question is whether an institution so conceived and so
founded has any part to play, any worthwhile function to perform amid the
perplexities that pursue us at this present day.
Let us see.
But first let us take a look at modern life. What's the
matter with it? Very, very much.
In the first place, we have allowed the plain and simple
life of the pioneer days to drift into a thing so infernally intricate, so
infinitely involved, so confoundedly complex, that the human mind stands
appalled at the thought of it. No longer are our wants few, and plain and
simple, but many and multiplex. We want so many things in such great variety
and in such quick succession that half the time we don't know what we want. Our
houses, our minds and our lives are so gorged with many things that we are able
to digest and assimilate scarcely any of them. From the cradle to the grave it
is the same. Our children have it put upon them early in life. Where once a
little sister cuddled a rag-doll to her heart, she must now perforce pet a
Parisian puppet festooned with fashionable furbelows. Little Bobbie must be
denied his hobby-horse and must get mixed up in a meccano set. Where once the
little red school house did the business we now have the kindergarten, the
primary school, the secondary school and the high school, and these with all
sorts of fads and frills fastened upon them. We must get into everything, and
have everything, and "put on" a whole kennel full of "dog", even if we have to
cheat our creditors and betray our friends to do it. A mortgage goes on the
home so we can grab a graphonola, an auto, or a radio. Corned beef and cabbage
have given away to camembert and caviar. Dad can no longer sit down to "supper"
in his shirt sleeves, but must climb into dress clothes before he can be "served
with dinner". We no longer dare to have a plain and simple bellyache, but must
get along with gastritis, or colitis, or appendicitis. We dare not even go
simply and: plainly crazy, but must be cursed by a "complex". And when at last
it comes to the matter of making an escape from this mundane sphere we realize
that the simple business of dying has become so elaborate a piece of procedure,
that it were far cheaper had we kept walking around instead of trying to meet
the "mortician's" bill. Once we might have been simply and plainly planted by
an under taker, but "them days is gone forever!"
WE LUST FOR SPEED
In the midst of all this and making the muddle worse, we
have been bitten by the speed-bug, and have fallen a victim to the
skidding-sickness. We have developed a perfect passion for rapid motion.
Nothing can go fast enough to suit us. Express trains rush us from Chicago to
New York, ocean greyhounds scoot us from New York to London in a few short days,
and high-speed cars hurl us to hell in a jiffy. We can't be patient or
deliberate about anything. We are rabidly restless and can't bear to sit
still. We must keep in motion. "Where do we go from here?" is the common cry.
"We don't know where we are going, but we are on our way!" We want what we want
when we want it. Ready-built houses and ready-to-wear clothing are the rule. We
are willing to wait for nothing. Everyone is on the jump. We hurry here and
there, chasing first this thing, and then that, darting about like wild
water-bugs at a sewer's mouth. We are ready to "try anything once", and always
crazy to try something new. When jazz fails to give us joy, then our madness
manifests itself in the Marathon dance.
Realizing that something is wrong society tries to find a
cure in new laws. Then we have such perfect pestilence of law-making that
humanity heaves a great sigh of relief the moment Congress or the Legislature
adjourns. We have too much government in business and far too little business in
government. We have a cataclysm of class-legislation, each crowd crazy to hog
things for its particular class, and "to hell with the other fellow". We have a
whole raft of radical legislation, and less respect for law than ever before.
Russia may have her Soviet slaughters, but poor America, God pity the day! has
her Mer Rouge murders and her Herrin massacres. These things menace the land
with dissension and disunion, disruption and disaster, with everything that
divides and destroys.
And what have we as Masons to do with all this? What can we
do about it?
Well, in the first place, we can awake to a realization
that it is high time we no longer rested content with a mere recitation of our
ritual, rules and regulations. That there is coming to us, now as never before,
a clarion call to promptly and persistently put our precepts into practice. To
realize again that
"A man of words and not of deeds,
Is like a garden full of weeds."
For Masonry, from time immemorial, has been ever sternly
and soberly and seriously conservative and never riotously radical. Masonry has
always had in her heart a withering contempt for things frantic and foolish, and
has ever firmly stood for these things that make for stability and order, for
strength and establishment.
WHAT DOES MASONRY STAND FOR
The trouble with far too many of us is that we don't know
what our Masonry really stands for.
How many of us, I wonder, have ever truly realized that
when the Master in the East has charged us saying "In the State, you are to be a
quiet and peaceful subject, true to your government and just to your country.
You are not to countenance disloyalty or rebellion, but patiently submit to
legal authority and conform with cheerfulness to the government of the country
in which you live", there was then and there laid upon our shoulders the
performance of a duty as sacred, as solemn and as binding as anything contained
in the obligation taken at the altar?
We cannot practice our Masonry until we have first learned
to know it. Once we have learned to know it we will clearly see that there is
not one of our modern perplexities but what can be solved by a faithful
application of Masonic principles and precepts.
But there can be no salvation if the principles are merely
preached and practised. Yet if they are practised untold good will be done.
It would simply transform the world, if, for a single year,
each and every one of us would simply live up to our ancient religion "to be
good Men and true - Men of Honour and Honesty."
If we are the sort of men we have prided ourselves upon
being the sort who seek each other's welfare and happiness equally with our own,
we will help one another to know what our Masonry means - do this by admonition,
discussion, debates, study and lectures. Here is where our study clubs, our
research societies and our service associations come in.
But above all else we must help each other to live the
life, in the shop and the market-place, in the office and the factory, in the
home and on the street, so that the blessed influence of "good men and true" may
be met with everywhere.
For at the bottom the fault of the present state of things
is not legal or economical, but personal and individual. It is not the system
that is wrong, but the men who run it. It's high time we quit blaming a system
for our own shortcomings.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Our Republic is "one made of many" and if each one of the
many does his duty then, and only then, will the "Temple of our Liberties"
endure. It will not do for any one of us to wait for the other to do his duty.
Each one must be up and doing, acting of his own volition, sweeping before his
own door, hosing his own row. It is the old question of Hiram Abiff over again;
the question of individual moral responsibility, of individual fidelity,
regardless of personal loss or sacrifice.
There is no need for new laws, new systems, new forms of
government. There is a crying need for plain old-fashioned individual
performance of duty.
"Honour and Fame from no condition rise,
Act well your part - there all the honour lies!"
Otherwise all our preaching of precepts, all our
ritualizing, will be as
"A thing full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Masonry has a glorious gospel, as we her votaries well
know, but glorious as that gospel may be, there is another far more vitally
important and that is the gospel of the individual Mason as shown in his
individual life.
"THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO YOU"
"There's a sweet old story translated for man,
But writ in the long, long ago-
The Gospel according to Mark, Luke and John-
Of Christ and His mission below.
Men read and admire the gospel of Christ,
With its love so unfailing and true;
But what do they say, and what do they think,
Of the gospel according to you?
'Tis a wonderful story, that gospel of love,
As it shines in the Christ-life divine;
And, oh, that its truth might be told again
In the story of your life and mine!
Unselfishness mirrors in every scene;
Love blossoms on every sod;
And back from its vision the heart comes to tell
The wonderful goodness of God.
You are writing each day a letter to men;
Take care that the writing is true;
'Tis the only gospel that some men will read-
The gospel according to you."
THE MENACE WITHIN
When a candidate seeks admission into our fraternity we
compel him to sign a petition in which he solemnly states that "he is prompted
to solicit this privilege by a sincere wish of being serviceable to his fellow
citizens".
Is that pure "bunk", or does it really mean something?
We are prompted to put this question by reason of the fact
that there have arisen in recent years a number of organizations pretending to
be Masonic that are anything but serviceable to mankind.
They pretend to be "Masonic" by reason of the fact that
they permit no one to join them who is not a Master Mason because of the fact
that their membership is composed of Masons only, the thoughtless Mason and the
uninformed non-Mason, alike, conclude that these societies are Masonic, despite
the fact that none of them have been either recognized or ratified by any
governing Masonic body.
They are thus practically parading under false pretences
and practising a fraud upon the innocent and unwary, thereby putting Masonry in
a false light before the world.
We say parading advisedly, for their votaries seem set upon
strutting the streets clad in gay, gaudy and garish garments, flaunting flaming
banners, tearing the public peace to tatters with the blare of the trombone and
the boom of the bass-drum.
Seeing which the citizen on the sidewalk cries, "See, there
go the Masons!" The Masons, forsooth! These devotees of dazzle and din!
And the newspapers, who hate things hidden, to whom nothing
secret is sacred, who persecute privacy and pray to the god of Publicity, help
him to believe that Masonry is just that!
And, my brethren, unless we are awake to the danger that
threatens us, Masonry is apt to degenerate into just that.
These institutions are growing in number. The other day
the writer counted up fourteen of them. Grand Masters and Grand Lodge
Correspondents have assailed them in no uncertain terms, and not without reason,
for they are a real menace to Masonry.
They could gain no lasting foothold among men were it not
for their pretended holding of a Masonic certificate of good character. In the
past, to say that a thing was "Masonic" was to certify to its high standing.
The story of Masonry's devotion to the great doctrines of friendship, morality
and brotherly love, of the relief of the down-trodden and distressed, and her
dispelling of the darkness of ignorance by the light of truth, has placed her
upon the topmost pinnacle in the esteem and respect of men. These "side
organizations" well know this, and they seek to slip into places of power and
influence by means of their alleged Masonic passports. But unless this menace
is soon curbed, the day is not distant when a certificate of Masonic membership
will have lost all its meaning and value.
These nefarious organizations are a menace to Masonry in
many ways.
One of the queer things about them is that the zealots who
espouse the cause of these side organizations seem to have so little respect or
reverence for the very institution, membership in whose ranks they make a
prerequisite for joining their own order. Their candidate chasers invade the
sanctity of the lodge room, interfere with the workers, make the candidate feel
that the degree work is but of passing importance, a matter of mere incident on
the way to the "real thing". Treating the Blue Lodge degrees as mere stepping
stones, they tread beneath ruthless feet the beautiful flowers of the ritual, in
a mad effort to rush the candidate into their fold. Before the apprentice is
dry behind the ears he is harangued and pestered, brow-beaten and bulldozed,
into joining their gang and "having a good time". The immemorial dignity and
decorum of the lodge is disturbed, its noble lessons and high doctrines are
discounted and disparaged, its high ideals are trailed in the dust, and the
bewildered candidate comes to think that the Order exists for frivolity and not
for service.
MASONRY IS SANE, STEADY, SOBER
Now Masonry has endured down the ages, solely because of
its serious and earnest character, because of the sane, steady and sober quality
of its aims and ideals. These "side-orders" strive to slur over all these and to
substitute in their place a silly seeking for pleasure and a light-headed lust
for excitement. Their rituals far too often savour of vulgarity and their
horse-play verges at times even upon the obscene.
It is upon this sort of thing that these side-orders seek
to have set the stamp and seal of Masonic approval, and we seem content to stand
complacently by and let them get it.
They drag their "politics", their petty piques and
quarrels, their disappointed ambitions to have high-sounding titles, and wear
resplendent robes, into the sacred precincts of the lodge-room, disturb the work
of the builders and destroy the peace and harmony of the Craft.
The sort of men who are won to the Order by this sort of
thing do it no good, for they are not worth having - are not fit material for
the building "of the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens".
Time was when Masonry was known as "a system of morality
veiled in allegory". If this thing is not checked, how long will it be before
it comes to be called a frenzy of frivolity, fed by folly"?
These "side-orders" scatter Masonry's force. They lower its
aims and purposes, destroy its ancient dignity and blur the vision of its lofty
ideals. They tend inevitably to wreck its power and influence by destroying its
solidarity, and threaten to take away wholly its power to serve mankind.
We are coming to have far too many "play-grounds in
Masonry", too much of a rush for "refreshment" in an institution anciently
dedicated to "labour". Masonry is in a mighty poor business when it feeds
modern society's already overwrought passion for passing pleasures. If there
ever was a day when men needed to quit dallying with delights and attended to
business, it is now. For the popular call nowadays seems to be for the man who
will be "a good fellow", who will forget his business, let it slide, and in the
end make of himself an object of Masonic charity.
We are taking far too many men into the Order who do not
know what an earnest thought means, and who care less. Far too many who have
neither the brains nor the desire to seek back of the symbol to the great idea
thereby symbolized. These men lie within the belly of the Order like leaden
lumps that will not be digested, and they are not an asset, but a liability.
And it is these very "side-orders" that lure these
light-headed liabilities within our fold-bad cess to them! and at a time when,
God knows! we don't need them, but do need earnest men.
If by any chance this mushroom growth of these Masonic
side-shows results in any way from a reaction against a humdrum and lifeless
recital of the ritual by mechanical Masons who have no idea of the meaning of
the words that glide so glibly from their lips, then the remedy is not far to
seek.
For, as Brother Weston of Vermont has so clearly pointed
out, all the lodges need to do is to make the ritual interesting by means of
lectures, readings, discussions and debates, tending to make its meaning clear;
for a man simply cannot put life and force into the words he utters unless his
soul is first set all aglow with their meaning.
That immortal meaning is there, hidden, buried, concealed
within the ritual, and our very salvation depends upon our working it out.
Perhaps if we will do this we will be pouring Paris-green
upon these parasites.
But if that doesn't work we may need a new set of Masonic
police regulations that will put these bums in the bastile where they belong.
----o----
Standing for Definite Things
By Bro. GEORGE H. DERN, P. G. M., Utah
Bro. Dern, a Nebraskan by birth, was made a Mason at Salt
Lake City, in Utah, in 1897, and received the high honour of the Grand
Mastership in that jurisdiction in 1913. Readers will recall a memorable
article of his in THE BUILDER, December, 1921, on "Monitorial Symbolism of the
Third Degree and its Application to Every Day Life"; a comparison of that fine
piece of interpretation with the discussion below will show how full-orbed is
his comprehension of Freemasonry. An explanation of why the Towner-Sterling
Bill did not pass was contributed to THE BUILDER, May, 1923, by Bro. Senator
Simeon D. Fess; in the same number appeared a report of the attitude of Grand
Lodges toward that bill. In connection with these studies the reader should
review the special Public School Number of August, 1922.
Doubtless it has occurred to many Masons as somewhat
strange that Masonry generally throughout the United States has until lately
been advocating a specific piece of legislation, namely the Towner-Sterling
Bill. Perhaps some good brethren may think this a violation of the section in
most if not all Masonic codes which provides that "the discussion of political,
sectarian or other subjects not strictly of a Masonic character is prohibited in
every lodge in this Grand Jurisdiction." In the hope of clearing up any such
doubts or misgivings the following observations are presented:
It sometimes happens in the lives of men that they are in
the midst of a great change or evolution without realizing it. They are so
engrossed with their immediate personal affairs, so bound by custom and
established routine, or regard their old views and opinions as so obvious, that
they do not see or comprehend the big movements that are carrying mankind along
with them. When such tendencies become perceptible they may be deplored by
persons of a conservative cast of mind who venerate the past as the repository
of all wisdom and are shocked when "God lets loose a thinker in the world" who
proposes something new to meet new conditions. But progress is the law of all
nature, and the world moves forward, not backward, despite our puny efforts to
check it.
There are signs of a change in the attitude of Freemasonry.
Those of us who have been Masons long enough to have become thoroughly
indoctrinated know that it has always been deemed improper to commit Masonry to
any specific program except the program of brotherly love. It has been the rule
that in all public matters Masons, though imbued with and guided by Masonic
precepts and ideals, should act as individuals, each according to his own
judgment, and never as a united organization.
MASONRY SHOULD STAND FOR DEFINITE THINGS
During the past few years, however, many Masonic leaders
have been laying particular stress upon the necessity of Masonry standing for
definite things, and presenting a united front in advancing those things. Very
many Masons who do not pretend to be leaders in the Craft complain that it is
hard for one who is not an officer to keep up an active interest in Masonry
because we do not stand for anything concrete. They say that merely coming to
lodge and seeing the same old degrees conferred over and over and over again be
comes tiresome to a man with an active intellect; that for gathering in social
functions to reiterate what fine thing Masonry is and what fine fellows Masons
are does not result in any real accomplishment, and that we ought to be more
than a mere mutual admiration society; that Masonry is a great, big, clumsy
animal that does not know what to do with itself nor how to use its strength.
The average Mason will readily agree with these sentiments;
but as for having Masonry stand for definite things, that is a delicate matter
and must be handled discreetly. The oldtimers who put in our codes the
provision that political, sectarian or other subjects not strictly of a Masonic
character should not be discussed in lodge were very wise, and assuredly it is
not proposed by anybody to abandon that time honoured policy, upon which our
fellowship rests, and which is our strength and support.
About strictly Masonic principles there can be no
difference of opinion among us, and they may be safely discussed with the utmost
freedom, as well as their application to our every day problems. But when we
get into public questions we at once plunge into controversial matters, about
which Masons will differ as widely and as violently as outsiders. I cannot
attack a man's pet opinions without hurting his self-esteem, and when I do that
I make him angry. If I assail his political or religious beliefs he gets just
as angry as he does when I make slighting remarks about his children or his
automobile. Our opinions are our property, and the most natural thing in the
world is to defend what belongs to us, and to resent any attempt to destroy or
belittle it. For example, suppose someone in a Masonic meeting should undertake
to make a speech against the protective tariff, which many good Masons sincerely
consider as sacred as the holy Grail. Immediately peace and harmony would beat
a hasty retreat, and the meeting would blow up with a loud report. Suppose we
should declare against the right of working men to strike. Many good, sincere
Masons might think such a declaration right and proper, whilst many other
equally good and sincere Masons would regard it as a vital blow at their
fundamental human rights. And so our unanimity and concord would vanish, and we
should speedily be divided into wrangling, jangling cliques and factions.
Clearly we must be careful to do nothing that might destroy us from within.
WE DON'T WANT MASONRY TO RUN THE COUNTRY
But the danger of disintegrating Masonry itself is not the
only objection. We do not want to see Masonry, as an organized body, undertake
to run the whole country, any more than we want to see the Roman Catholic Church
or the Ku Klux Klan run the country, because it would be unamerican. In a
democracy all the people should rule, not a select class or sect, even though
that class be so high-minded a body of men as the Masons. Furthermore, no
organization whose sessions and deliberations are secret, as ours are, has any
right to try to dominate public affairs, because "popular government moves in
the light of day, not in dark and secret places; it appeals to the whole mass of
people for support, not merely to the members of a particular society; and it
values power only for public ends, not for the aggrandizement and glorification
of any single institution." And so it would be a gross perversion of our lofty
pretensions as upright, liberty-loving Americans if we were to organize as a
national body for the purpose of dictating or controlling the affairs of the
nation, no matter how pure our intentions might be.
However, it is a proper function of Masonry to fight
against other organizations doing this very thing, and that is one of the
reasons why Masons are always interested in progressive educational legislation;
but let us be very careful about building up a powerful machine that would be
certain sooner or later to abuse its power.
And so this suggestion of standing for something definite
has its pitfalls, and we cannot afford to be too definite. Or perhaps it would
be better to say we ought to be very definite in limiting the scope of our
united action. But there are plenty of things in the fundamental Masonic
principles that have a direct and broad public significance, and in the support
of which all Masons can afford to unite and battle side by side.
As Masons we are seekers after Light-that is, knowledge,
wisdom, enlightenment. If Light is good for us it is good for everybody, and we
can engage in no greater work than the diffusion of Light amongst all the people
- that is, public education. So when Masonry interests itself in education it
is interesting itself in a subject that is not and should not be political in
the sense of being controversial; a subject that is not and should not be
sectarian, and never will be so long as Masons can prevent it; a subject
strictly of a Masonic character, since it is of the very essence of Masonry.
Moreover, one of the primary teachings of Freemasonry is
good citizenship, and we have not only a right but a duty to be interested in
anything that promotes good citizenship. What is the real purpose of our free
public school system but to train the children for citizenship? What other
justification is there for taxing me to educate my neighbor's children?
So there you have the syllogism:
Masonry stands for good citizenship.
Education promotes good citizenship.
Therefore, Masonry stands for education.
He would be a captious critic indeed who would deny a
Masonic lodge the right to discuss public education, or even a single concrete
phase of it, as expressed in a specific piece of legislation.
----o----
The Story of Freemasonry in New Jersey
By Bro. ERNEST A. REED, P. G. M., New Jersey
To tell the story of Masonry in the State of New Jersey one
must go back to the beginning of duly constituted Masonry in the New World. All
available records seem to show that modern Freemasonry was formally introduced
into the American colonies by Daniel Cox, or Coxe, who on June 5, in the year
1730, received a deputation from the Duke of Norfolk, Grand Master of the Free
and Accepted Masons of England, appointing him Provincial Grand Master of the
Provinces of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in America.
The original deputation, which is on file in the archives
of the Grand Lodge of England, gives Brother Coxes residence as New Jersey; and
of this there can be no doubt for the histories and records of our state also
bear witness of this fact. Moreover, Provincial Grand Master Coxe was an
important personage in the province. He was the son of Dr. Coxe of London, one
of the great proprietors. He was a member of the old New Jersey assembly and at
one time its speaker. He served for many years as Chief Magistrate and upon his
death was buried at Burlington, New Jersey.
Just what steps Coxe took to establish lodges in America is
not very clear. The records of the Grand Lodge of England do not show the
appointment of any Deputy Grand Master or other officers of a Provincial Grand
Lodge, nor the congregating of Masons into lodges; but records were not very
well kept in those days, nor was it the custom to report all proceedings to the
Grand Lodge, and it is possible that some of the old lodges in Pennsylvania were
instituted by him. Perhaps his failure to establish lodges in the province of
New Jersey may have been due in a measure to the Provincial Governor, Lord
Cornbury, whose unpopularity in America led to his recall. Yet Coxe was known
throughout the province as an eminent lawyer and upon his return to England in
1731 he was received in the Grand Lodge of England as "The Right Worshipful
Grand Master of North America."
English records show in addition to Coxes appointment as
Provincial Grand Master in 1730, Richard Riggs appointed in 1737 and Francis
Goelet in 1751. There were other Grand Lodges in England at this time and other
Provincial Grand Masters were sent by them to America. In 1753 George Harrison
became Provincial Grand Master of New York and from him the first lodge in New
Jersey got its charter. In May, 1761, an application for a lodge was made to
Provincial Grand Master Harrison by a number of Masons residing in what was then
the town of Newark. William Tukey, Esq., was appointed the first Worshipful
Master and the lodge was to meet at the Rising Sun tavern, a tiny inn near what
is now the heart of a great city.
The original minutes of this famous lodge for the years
from its institution are still in existence in the archives of St. John's Lodge,
No. 1, of Newark. From 1764 till 1768 the minutes were suspended. In 1769 they
were reopened again, continuing till 1772. During the darkness of the
Revolution they ceased altogether. When the Grand Lodge of New Jersey was
formed St. John's Lodge was represented and a warrant was given to it which was
numbered 2 on the New Jersey register, a lodge at Bedminster which had been
warranted by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1767 being given No. 1. The
lodge at Bedminster became extinct, however, and St. John's Lodge was allowed to
assume its number. St. John's Lodge is still active and known throughout the
length and breadth of the land as the oldest lodge in New Jersey and one of the
oldest in America. In 1762 the Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts gave a
warrant for a lodge in Elizabeth Towne, New Jersey (now Elizabeth) and in 1763 a
warrant was given by the same Grand Lodge for a lodge at Prince Towne (now
Princeton), but both of these lodges have become extinct and their records lost.
MANY MILITARY LODGES EXISTED
Many lodges were in existence in the armed forces of the
Revolution. New Jersey lying as it did between two greater fields of operation,
New York and Philadelphia, became a concourse across which the contending armies
marched, sometimes in victory, often in retreat. The Lecestershire Regiment, or
the British 17th Regiment of Foot, as it was commonly called, had a famous
lodge known as Unity Lodge. During Washington's hasty retreat across New Jersey
following the abandonment of Fort Lee on the Hudson River he was closely
followed by the British, and this regiment was a part of the pursuing force.
Washington's march led through Newark, Elizabeth, New Brunswick, Princeton to
Trenton, where he crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. The British
17th Regiment stopped at Princeton, occupying the college town. The rest of the
British Army, including Rall's regiment of Hessians, marched on to Trenton.
Washington's recrossing of the Delaware on Christmas night
and his thrilling victory over the Hessians at Trenton needs no recital here;
nor does that other exploit when, the British believing they had him cornered,
rested for the night, and awoke to the sound of cannon and musket fire at
Princeton, twelve miles away, and realized that Washington had escaped.
The British had waited the arrival of reinforcements.
These included in part the 17th Regiment of Foot, which had received orders to
march from Princeton to Trenton at dawn. As they filed out of town over a
little bridge, they saw Mercer's Division of Washington's army moving up the
opposite bank of the stream. Both forces tried to reach and hold the top of a
small hill nearby, which became the scene of the battle. The advance was led by
General Hugh Mercer, a member of Washington's own lodge, Fredericksburg Lodge,
No. 4, of Fredericksburg, Va. In the fighting General Mercer was knocked from
his horse by a blow from the butt of a British musket; but he defended himself
until mortally wounded. He died in a farm house near by.
In the confusion of the fighting and British retreat an
American soldier, one of four men left of Major Haslett's command from Delaware,
picked up on the battlefield the warrant which had been granted to Unity Lodge
in the British 176 Regiment of Foot by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. The warrant
was carried back to Delaware and reposes in the archives of Union Lodge of
Middletown. In this engagement the gallant captain of the 17th Regiment,
Brother William Leslie, was wounded. By order of Washington he was cared for by
the American surgeons and placed with the American wounded in the farm wagons
which served for ambulances in those days. As the little army after its victory
wound its way through the hills of western New Jersey, Leslie died and was
buried with military honours, and, as tradition tells us, with Masonic
ceremonies in the graveyard in the little town of Pluckamin.
A new warrant to replace the one lost in battle was later
given the British regiment by a Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and this in turn
fell into the hands of the forces of General Wayne, "Mad Anthony," at the time
of the surprise and capture of Stony Point, New York, the British regiment at
that time forming a part of the garrison; but the warrant was courteously
returned by General Samuel H. Parsons, a member of American Union Lodge of the
Connecticut Line.
There were lodges among the American troops and three at
least among the forces that made up the New Jersey line. Perhaps the best known
military lodge on the American side was American Union Lodge of the Connecticut
Line, as its name indicates, a lodge formed among the troops from Connecticut.
The warrant and minutes of this lodge are preserved among the records of the
Grand Lodge of Connecticut; but at the time this lodge came into being there was
no Grand Lodge of Connecticut and the warrant was granted by Deputy Grand Master
Gridley of Massachusetts, the same Gridley who laid out the breastworks at
Bunker Hill and who was acting Grand Master on account of the death in battle of
Grand Master Joseph Warren. The minutes are well kept and show every location
of the Connecticut troops.
LAFAYETTE VISITS A LODGE
This lodge is referred to here because of its famous
session of Dec. 27, 1779, while the American Army lay in winter quarters at
Morristown, New Jersey. It was a celebration of the old Masonic festival, the
Feast of St. John the Evangelist. The minutes of the lodge give every detail of
this meeting. The records show sixty-nine persons present, one of whom was
Washington, the Commander-in-Chief. There was a procession, banquet, addresses
and a general good time. Some of the lodge paraphernalia used on this occasion
was borrowed from St. John's Lodge of Newark, and the old minute book of St.
John's Lodge, No. 1, has a record of the fact that "Sundrie articles were taken
out of the lodge chest and lent to Brother Thomas Kinney and Brother Jerry
Brewin to carry as far as Morris Towne, etc." There has always been a tradition
that Lafayette was made a Mason on this occasion and a well-known history of New
Jersey as well as a recently published and popular work on Masonry state this as
a fact. There is no record to substantiate it, however, and the list of those
present, while including the names of many prominent persons in the armed forces
of the Revolution, does not include the name of the distinguished Frenchman;
moreover, the statement made by Lafayette himself on the occasion of his visit
to the Grand Lodge of Delaware as related in the memoirs of the beloved Dr.
Chaytor, who was present on that occasion, seems to prove beyond question that
Lafayette was made a Mason in a military lodge in the American Army at Valley
Forge, Pennsylvania.
Unfortunately, many of the old lodge records have been
lost, but those that remain reveal interesting details of Colonial life. The
old minute book of Burlington Lodge shows that the Masons of Burlington paid the
Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania for the warrant of Burlington Lodge a fee of "2,160
Doll's Cn'l Curr'y", which seems an enormous sum to pay for a warrant; but when
we note it is to be paid in Continental currency we realize that this is simply
an evidence of the extraordinary depreciation of the currency of the time.
Later on we find that the lodge reimbursed the members for the amount advanced
to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and an appropriation of six pounds was
sufficient to meet the need.
On Dec 18, 1796, a convention was called at New Brunswick
for the purpose of establishing a Grand Lodge in the state of New Jersey. The
officers selected on that occasion included the following, whose names and
titles are given as they appear on the old record:
"The Hon. David Brearly, Esq., Chief Justice of New Jersey:
Right Worshipful Grand Master.
"The Hon. Robert Lettis Hooper, Vice-President of New
Jersey: Deputy Grand Master.
"William Leedle, Esq., late High Sheriff of Morris: Senior
Grand Warden.
"Daniel Marsh, Esq., Representative in the Assembly of New
Jersey: Junior Grand Warden.
"John Noble Cumming, Esq., late Colonel in the Army of the
United States: Grand Secretary.
"Maskell Ewing, Jun., Esq., Clerk of the General Assembly
of New Jersey: Deputy Grand Secretary.
"Joshua Corshon, Esq., High Sheriff of Hunterdon: Grand
Treasurer."
The second session of this body convened at New Brunswick
on Jan. 30, 1787, and at this time the present Grand Lodge of New Jersey came
into being. Hon. David Brearly was elected Grand Master, an office to which he
was re-elected for three successive years. At the session of July, 1787, the
Grand Master was absent; but a letter from him was read which shows that he was
at the time representing New Jersey in the Federal Convention at Philadelphia.
Brearly had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the army of the Revolution and was a
warm personal friend of Washington. He was a member of the state and federal
conventions, and his signature appears on the Constitution of the United
States. For nine years he was Chief Justice of New Jersey.
The history of Masonry in New Jersey under the Grand Lodge
of New Jersey has been devoid of events of unusual interest; peace and harmony
have prevailed. Masonry has grown numerically till the Grand Master of New
Jersey presides today over nearly 75,000 members of our Craft congregated into
some 240 lodges. A number of years ago the Grand Lodge purchased a handsome
estate near Burlington for the purpose of providing a home for feeble and
indigent Masons and their wives, or their widows or orphans. The buildings have
been added to from time to time, and at present extensive alterations and
additions are in progress which will add greatly to the comfort and convenience
of our aged and youthful guests. Our present family consists of about 130
persons, one-third of whom are boys and girls. Additional property has been
purchased from time to time and today the home includes a farm of 150 acres, all
under cultivation.
Masons in New Jersey are deeply interested in all
activities of the Craft throughout the land, and have entered wholeheartedly and
substantially into the great national Masonic movements; the George Washington
Masonic National Memorial Association, the National Masonic Research Society,
and the Masonic Service Association.
----o----
The Lost Word
By Bro. ARTHUR C. PARKER, New York
There are many who can kindle the emotions, and more still
who can arouse the passions, but few who know how to set the mind aglow.
Brother Parker, who contributed a memorable article to THE BUILDER last May, is
one of these. The present article is one of a series of three bearing the
general title "Secrets of the Temple," and is here printed by permission of
Brother George K. Staples, 33 degree, Commander of Buffalo Consistory, who
arranged to publish the series in book form. The same series has been
translated into Italian and is now appearing under the imprint of the Grand
Lodge of Italy. The two companion studies will appear in these pages in due
time, and will be followed by a discussion of the Swastika, now being written
especially for THE BUILDER. The Scottish Rite, Northern Jurisdiction, has
signalized its appreciation of Brother Parker's services in leading his brethren
to think Masonically by electing him to receive the 33 degree next September.
Brother Parker is now an associate editor of THE BUILDER.
UPON a clay tablet found amid the ruins of an ancient city
upon the Euphrates was found the words of a hymn - a hymn about a Word. The
song is old, five thousand years old, and perhaps twenty-five centuries older
than any Hebrew scripture, and, in any event, it antedates the final development
of those writings. Shall we pause to listen?
The Word that causes the heavens on high to tremble,
The Word that makes the world below to quake,
The Word that bringeth destruction to the Annunakis,
His Word is beyond the diviner, beyond the seer!
His Word is a tempest without a rival.
The Word of the Lord the heavens cannot endure,
The Word of Enlil the earth cannot endure,
The heavens cannot endure the stretching forth of His hand,
The earth cannot endure the setting forth of His foot!
Here we have an ancient hymn of Babylon in which the wise
priesthood of a great religion sang praises to a word. But what this word is we
are not told, yet the word is mighty. The adjustment and the readjustment of
the Babylonian pantheon was nothing else than an effort to discover the key-word
of the world. Nor was the effort of Egypt with its grotesque procession of
zoomorphic deities anything less.
And so religions have come and gone, through darkness,
superstition and ignorance, striving to find the great secret of welfare and the
magical potence that once possessed should be the secret that would unlock the
doors of the invisible.
The mystic's search for the great name that shall open all
things is as old as man. The mystic still believes that there is a divine
mystery concealed in some word, and all through the ages he has thought that he
should discover that name. The Hindoo sage pronounces the word AUM, and in it
feels that he has a key-word to paradise. Even when, by revelation, the gods
tell their names, man has believed that the real name was concealed either
totally or within the enigma of the name or in its numerical value. Thus within
the name Elohina (Elhim) the mystic finds the number 3.1415, and asserts that
Elhim is the master word by which the circle of eternity may be measured.
All ancient names are studied by the Kabbalists for their
esoteric numerical value. The letters of the alphabet are also given values in
other terms. Thus the sacred word spelled Aleph-Vau-Mem (AUM) would mean: A =
Man + Power; U = Creation + Passage; M = Woman + Mother. This word is a mystic
triad by which creative energy is invoked, but in a spiritual sense.
The mystic name makers, therefore, in making names sought
to choose letters that had certain values and certain numbers. Now the numbers
of a name might be added so as to produce another number, for example: Solomon
would in Graeco-Egyptian have the literal value of S-L-M-N. S=60; L=30; M=40;
N=50. These numbers added give 180. This reduced becomes a series of 20
nines. Nine is the perfect number and is three times three. "The sound of the
voice" - such is the meaning of 180, but nine means "My shield and protection".
Again let us interpret each letter of this word S-L-M-N. S=60, means a circle
commenced. L=30, means the expansion of the circle. M=40, means an
uninterrupted continuation (feminine passivity). N-50, means a final extension,
a conclusion.
Let us still further examine this mystical name of
Solomon. The word plainly says, I am a circular line, extended, continued and
concluded. It says, moreover, that it consists of four parts, of the following
measures: 60, 30, 40, 50. These total 180, or the number of degrees in a half
circle. Therefore, the circle is divided into the number of degrees indicated;
i.e., 60+30=90; 40+50=90. Whether this is geometrical or astronomical matters
little, for from a study of these angles we can work out, if we have the taste,
a whole scheme of Solomonic wisdom. The best interpretation is that the word
represents the rising of the sun in the east (Sol), that it passes the morning
of S and L and arrives at zenith between L and M (OM), and sets in the west
beyond M and N, or ON, and ON is the city or abode of the Sun, the Egyptian name
for Heliopolis.
This example is not introduced to mystify or to create the
idea that some mysterious doctrine lies behind every name, for most names are so
corrupted from the original forms that they cannot easily be analyzed
Kabbalistically now. We merely introduce this name to emphasize that the
ancients had meanings back of names, and that these meanings might often be
discovered. Yet, if a mystical name of a god did conceal a secret, it was so
devised that a key-name was used before the real name could be discovered. Thus
a man named Solomon might have hidden his name under a substitute word and
called himself Davidson, Wiseman, or Jedidiah or some similar name, by which it
might be harder to divine the mystery of his "Word" or to "get his number".
Masons are given a new name at the beginning of their
initiation into the mysteries, but this name only suggests the real new name
that they are to have. The real name comes only to him who overcometh and who
hath eaten of the hidden manna. It is then that he receives a white stone and
in the stone a "new name" written. (Rev. ii, 17.) Nor must it be thought that
there are not those who have eaten of the "hidden manna" and who know their new
names.
Veneration of names has not entirely ceased even in
civilization. Each of us desires to keep his name "good", for "a good name is
rather chosen than fine ointment", "but the name of the wicked shall rot".
Many men labour "to make their names known". Men are
willing to expend millions of dollars to spread their names over the face of the
globe, as advertisers do, while others by doing great deeds are pleased to see
their names become household words.
Our names are a art of our personality, and this extends
even to our signatures. This is true to such an extent that there are those who
pretend to read the character of a man by his handwriting.
But, how vain it is to strive for the immortality of our
names to the neglect of the immortality of our souls.
And still the search for the unknown Word goes on, and man
seeks to discover his Deity by name. How easily the truth might be known if we
would but interpret aright the text: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORD
WAS WITH GOD, AND THE WORD WAS GOD. The nations of the earth since the first
awakening of man's religious instinct have turned their minds toward heaven and
inquired, "Who is it that has made the earth and all things thereon?" And
likewise men have inquired, "Who shall protect me and give me power, who shall
deliver me, and whom shall I call upon for favour?"
To answer this men evolved names of spirits, of gods, of
duads and triads, and sought by means of these names to discover Deity. Thus it
is that man's great quest is to find God and to know Him. To depict this quest
is a task that tempts the author's pen, for it is a subject of thrilling
interest.
Before going far afield, let us look toward the Hebrew
Bible, to see how these scriptures depict the search. Let us scan the first
line of Genesis and read from the Hebrew, itself, "In the beginning Gods
created-". But let us be more specific; the word translated here "gods" is the
Hebrew plural word Elohim (Alohim). Let us pause; why should the scriptures say
"gods"? The answer is not afar off; the ancient Hebrews had more than one god!
Every critical scholar admits this and seeks to enlighten
us upon the ancient Hebrew pantheon. But we need not go afar to see that even
the scriptures as we have them also admit this.
But in this word El (o) him we have the root Al, El, Il,
and in that word we have the whole religious history of Babylon and Semitic Asia
Minor of antiquity.
This word al means "turning toward" and further
elucidation, as suggested by Professor Delitzch, shows that it means "that which
a man, turns toward as a goal."
The ancient thought of their gods as dwelling up above in
the place toward which man turns his eyes in and above the sky. A Babylonian
hymn calls the sun-god "the goal toward which all the eyes of the inhabitants
are turned". (Cf. Job xxxvi, 25.) So, following this idea, the oldest of
Semites gave to the God-one who dwelt above and ruled the sky world the name il
or el. It was He to whom they looked.
The worship of Il or El by the early North Semitic tribes
as well as to the south was an established fact as early as 2500 B.C., 1300
years before the rise of the religion of Yahwe [Jehovah].
In later times these Els or Elohim were conceived as plural
beings, duads and triads and more. Suffice to relate that the names of the
early Hebrew gods were many and all of the local gods or baals, and particularly
Ashtar and Yerahme'el. These to the Hebrews were all Elohim, just as to the
northern Semites of Palestine they were Baalhim or baals. The word El, or Al,
was a far-spread name and from it the Arabians took the name of their Deities,
and later the Mohammedans used it in constructing their word for God - Allah.
Cheyne points out an interesting origin for the name El and
ascribes it to the Phoenician alm. This word was used as the title of the chief
god of the Phoenician trinity who was Yerahme'el. The title may have been thus
applied but as a word it was used far earlier than this special application of
it.
In the historical fragments that we have given we have only
indicated the world search, age-long, for the "lost word". In the new
dispensation we are given a clear vision of how we may discover that word and
apply it. Lost? Why should it ever have been lost? In all ages there have been
those who possessed that word, but these have been the few who had paid the
price of learn. It was folly, to think that this "word" could ever be
communicated by word of mouth or by outward sign, for it can be known only from
one source and by one means.
In ancient Freemasonry under the old operative system there
were three masters sitting in the west, "thereby better enabling them to observe
the rising of the sun in the east". Each master bore a rod as the symbol of his
office. Each rod was of different length, as follows: Solomon's rod was five
units in length, Hiram of Tyre's four units, and Hiram Abiff's three units.
According to Masonic tradition upon each rod was a name,
just such sort of names as Chapter Masons use, though not the same names by any
means.
By the use of the rods, placed end to end, a right angle
triangle can be formed. For example, rods of three inches, four inches and five
inches placed end to end in the form of a triangle will form a perfect right
angle at the point where rod 4 meets rod 3. Rod 5 makes the hypotenuse.
Now according to our ancient traditions upon the slain
Hiram's rod was the full name of Deity, or perhaps the first and most important
syllable. His rod was essential not only in forming the ineffable word but in
completing the right angle.
It was Hiram Abiff's rod for which the Craftsmen were
instructed to search, and not a square. The early ritual makers have erred, I
think, in making a square the implement discovered.
Thus is explained the calamity that is depicted in our
third degree, but the ritual as evolved since 1717 has obscured and even
mutilated the secrets as well as the meanings of more ancient rites.
An actual word was lost and with it one of the three
standards of Solomon's system of mensuration. Little wonder that Andonairarn
received a place of honour succeeding Hiram, for only Adonairam could make
another metal rod equal to that which was lost, but oven he could not engrave
upon it the lost syllable Yah or word Yabweh.
It is the philosopher who points the way by which we may
recover that word, for it is the real word and not any substitute that makes men
and Masons good men and true. And when we have given ourselves as the price,
the name enters our hearts; and when it so enters it becomes an impulse that
translates itself in the expression of a life.
----o----
The Grand Master of England
By Bro. DUDLEY WRIGHT, England
The Grand Master of England, reigning as he does over the
United Grand Lodge and all its dependencies, is the most widely known and
influential individual, no doubt, in the Masonic world, a brother of whom Masons
everywhere delight to hear and to honor, as much for his record as statesman and
soldier as for the high place he holds in the Craft. Thinking that readers of
THE BUILDER would be interested to see a biographical sketch of England's Grand
Master, we asked Bro. Wright to contribute the article given herewith.
It is in order in this same connection to say that Bro.
Wright himself is becoming more and more taxed to respond to the demands being
made on his pen. His name appears in journals here, there and everywhere over
the English speaking world with amazing frequency, and always in connection with
a solid contribution to Masonic literature. How he manages to do it all is a
mystery to his fellow scribes. May he be spared to keep at it for many a year to
come!
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, Prince Arthur William Patrick Albert,
Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, Earl of Sussex in the Peerage of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Saxony and Prince of Saxe-Coburg
and Gotha, was born at Buckingham Palace, London, on the 1st of May, 1850.
He entered the Army in 1868, was promoted Captain in 1871,
Major in 1875, Lieutenant-Colonel in 1876, Colonel in 1880, Major-General in the
same year, Lieutenant-General in 1889, General in 1893, and Field-Marshal in
1902. He is Colonel-in-Chief of the 6th Inniskilling Dragoons, the Highland
Light Infantry, the Rifle Brigade, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, and the Supply
and Transport Corps. He is also Colonel of the Grenadier Guards and the Army
Service Corps, Honorary Colonel of the South Irish Horse, the Royal East Kent
Yeomanry, the Duke of Connaught's Own Sligo Royal Field Reserve Artillery, 6th
Battalion Hampshire Regiment, 3rd Battalion the Queen's Own Royal West Kent
Regiment, 3rd and 4th Battalions Highland Light Infantry, the 18th County of
London Battalion, and the London Regiment (London Irish Rifles). His Royal
Highness is also Colonel-in-Chief of the following regiments of the Indian Army:
The 13th Duke of Connaught's Lancers, the 31st Duke of Connaught's Own Lancers,
the 7th Duke of Connaught's Own Rajputs, and the 129th Duke of Connaught's Own
Baluchis. He was Brigade-Major at Aldershot in 1873-4; Brigade-Major, Cavalry
Brigade, Aldershot, 1875; Assistant Adjutant-General, Gibraltar, 1875-6;
Brigadier-General, Aldershot, 1883; Major-General Bengal, 1883 to 1886;
Lieutenant-General, Bombay, 1886-1890; Lieutenant-General, Southern District,
1890-1896; Lieutenant-General Commanding in Troops at Aldershot, 1893-1896;
General Commanding the Forces in Ireland, 1900-1904; General Commanding the 3rd
Army Corps, 1901-1904; Inspector General of the Forces and President of the
Selection Board, 1904-1907; Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief and High
Commissioner in the Mediterranean, 1907-1909, and was appointed Governor-General
and Commander-in-Chief of the Dominion of Canada in 1911, which position he held
until 1916.
The Duke of Connaught saw service in Canada during the
Fenian Raid in 1870 and received the Medal and Clasp. He commanded the Brigade
of Guards in the Egyptian War of 1882, and was present at the battles of Mahuta
and Tel-el-Kebir, when he was mentioned in dispatches and was thanked by both
Houses of Parliament, receiving the Medal with Clasp, the Bronze Star, Second
Class Order and the Medjidie, and the C. B. He had the Royal Victorian Chain and
is a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, of the Most Noble Order of
the Thistle, of the Most Illustrious Order of St. Patrick, Grand Master and
Principal Knight of the Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath,
Knight Grand Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Knight
Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George,
Knight Grand Commander of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, and
Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. He is also a Knight of the
Golden Fleece of Spain, Knight of Saint Andrew of Russia, of the Annunciata of
Italy, of the Elephant of Denmark, of the Legion of Honor of France, of the
Chrysanthemum of Japan, of the Seraphim of Sweden, of the Tower and Sword of
Portugal and of the Spanish Military Order of Merit.
Oxford has conferred upon him the Doctorate of Civil Law,
while Cambridge and the Cape Universities gave him the degree of Doctor of Laws,
and the Punjab University gave him the Doctorate of Literature.
HIS MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
On the 13th of March, 1879, His Royal Highness married
Princess Louise Margaret Alexandra Victoria Agnes of Prussia, third daughter of
the late Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, and brethren will remember his
grief at her death on 14th March, 1917. There were three children of the
marriage, the eldest, Brother Prince Arthur Frederick Patrick Albert, K.G., K.T.,
P.C., who was appointed Past Grand Warden in 1914, was born on the 13th of
January, 1883. He married the Princess Alexandra Victoria Alberta Edwina Louise,
Duchess of Fife, on 15th October, 1913. The elder of the two
daughters, Princess Margaret Victoria Augusta Charlotte Norah, married in 1905
H. R. H. Prince Gustavus Adolphus, Crown Prince of Sweden, and her sudden death,
on the seventieth anniversary of her father's birth, came as a terrible blow to
the Grand Master. The marriage of the younger daughter to Commander Ramsay, in
the spring of 1919, when, of her own free will, she abandoned the rank and title
of Princess, preferring to be known as Lady Patricia Ramsay, is well within the
memory of all.
The occurrence of the seventieth anniversary of the birth
of the Duke of Connaught gave an opportunity for a display on the part of the
press, all over the world, as the representative of public opinion, to bear
testimony, not only to his popularity, but also to the eminent services he had
rendered to the nation throughout the whole of this public career. A writer in
The Times said:
"The Duke of Connaught was born on May Day, 1850, seventy
years ago. Not only in the United Kingdom, but in many distant parts of the
Empire, large numbers of the King's subjects will join this morning with real
sincerity in the good wishes of his family and near kinsmen. For longer than
most of us can remember, during the reigns of his mother, his brother and his
nephew, the Duke has been a well-known and most popular figure in the life of
the country, and both as a man and a soldier has won for himself an abiding
place in its affections.
"The great interest of his life has always been the Army.
From its guns to its gaiter-buttons, from the standpoint of a Woolwich cadet to
that of a Field-Marshal, he knows it through and through. He has served in turn
as engineer, gunner, rifleman, Dragoon and Hussar. At Tel-el-Kebir he commanded
the Brigade of Guards, and during the campaign was three times mentioned in
despatches; in 1886 he was appointed to the post of Commander-in-Chief at
Bombay, and afterwards commanded the troops at Aldershot, in Ireland, and in the
Mediterranean, where he was also High Commissioner; from 1904 to 1907 he held
the post of Inspector-General of the Forces, and during the war was appointed
Colonel-in-Chief of the Volunteers and Inspector of Oversea Troops. He would
certainly have succeeded the Duke of Cambridge as Commander-in-Chief if that
dignified office had not been abolished. As it is, he remains a Field-Marshal, a
real friend to the Army, and a practical and devoted soldier who for fifty-two
years has worthily upheld the military - but never militarist - traditions of
his godfather, the great Duke of Wellington.
“That, however, is only one side of his life and character.
He is deeply interested in the social welfare of the! people, as well as of the
Army, and is a generous supporter of charitable and benevolent schemes for the
benefit of his fellow citizens in the Home Country. As for the Empire, he has
always shown himself its loyal and hard-working servant, more especially in
South Africa and Canada. His work in Canada as Governor-General was of
particular value, and the fruits of it were plainly visible during the Prince of
Wales' tour in the Dominion. When he went there, fears were expressed in certain
quarters as to the wisdom of the appointment of a Royal Duke. It was felt that
some independent spirits might regard the establishment of a reign of Court
etiquette as an unwelcome innovation. But when the Royal Duke was found to be
human, Canada took him and his family to her heart, and his unfailing tact and
tireless interest in all the problems and activities of the Dominion soon made
him a general favorite. In consenting to an extension of his term of office
during the war, when his experience as a soldier was of so much service to those
who were engaged in the enrollment and training of the Canadian Expeditionary
Force, he put his own feelings in the background, in spite of his consideration
for the delicate health of the Duchess, and so added to the debt which the
Dominion as well as the Mother Country already owed him.
"He is, above all, a man of unfailing energy, who always
must be doing something. No sooner has one appointment or one journey come to an
end than he has embarked on another. Not only during the war, when, like the
whole of the Royal Family, from King and Queen downwards, he set a fine example
of unswerving and unselfish devotion to duty, but throughout his life he has
constantly been at the disposal of his country. He has still, we may hope, in
all human probability, many years of happy and useful life in front of him, and
he is today what he has always been, a fine pattern of an upright and honourable
English gentleman, who has well earned the feelings of respect and affection
with which his fellow-countrymen regard him."
On the same day many other tributes appeared in the daily
press all over the world. The Westminster Gazette wrote:
"All good wishes will go with the Duke of Connaught today
on the attainment of his seventieth birthday. In the Army, in public life, as
Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and still more in his later period as
Governor-General of Canada, the Duke has done whatever duty has fallen to him
with a zeal and thoroughness that have won him a place in the affection of the
people of the Empire. Quietly and efficiently he has illustrated the real
service that can be given to the State by a member of the Royal Family not in
the direct line of succession who brings brains and good will to his tasks. His
career in the Army was fruitful of much good, but we think today less of the
soldier than of the great gentleman whose whole life has been one of devoted
service. It was a happy chance that the Duke of Connaught was Governor-General
of Canada when war broke out. The Dominion required no stimulus to exertion, but
was much in need of the expert guidance that the Duke could give from his long
experience in the Army, and that he placed at the disposition of the Canadian
Government whole-heartedly."
HIS INTEREST IN FREEMASONRY
Those who have been privileged to attend any of the many
Masonic gatherings at which the Grand Master was present can bear willing
witness to his deep interest in all Craft doings, over whose affairs in England
he has presided with such distinction for so many years, but the Grand Master
was at his best, perhaps, when presiding over one of the lodges of which he was
the permanent Master. An incident of a very homely character took place a few
years since, on the occasion of the installation of the Duke of Connaught as
Worshipful Master of the Royal Colonial Institute Lodge, No. 3556, at
Freemasons' Hall. He not only invested his Deputy Master, to whom it was thought
he would delegate the investiture of the other officers, but insisted on his
right to invest all his officers, Tyler included, to their great pride and
delight.
Right from the time of his initiation the Duke of Connaught
has taker the keenest interest in all matters appertaining to the Craft. His
initiation took place in the Prince of Wales Lodge, No. 259, on 24th March,
1874, the ceremony being performed by his royal brother, H. R. H. the Prince of
Wales, then Worshipful Master of the lodge, afterwards King Edward VII. He
passed on to the next degree on 22nd June, 1874, and completed the steps of his
admission into the Craft on 27th April of the following year, the day
immediately preceding that on which the Prince of Wales was installed as Grand
Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, at which ceremony the Duke of
Connaught had the honor and privilege of being present. He became an active
member of other lodges, notably the Royal Alpha Lodge, No. 16, of which he was
Master in 1881; the Aldershot Army and Navy Lodge, No. 1971; the Navy Lodge, No.
2612; the Jubilee Masters' Lodge, No. 2712; the Nil Sine Labore Lodge, No. 2736;
the Old Wellingtonian Lodge, No. 3404, and the Royal Colonial Institute Lodge,
already mentioned, of most of which he is the permanent Master.
In 1877 the Duke was invested Senior Grand Warden of
England, and his younger brother, the late Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, was
at the same time appointed Junior Grand Warden, but the only occasion on which
the three royal brothers were present at the same time at a communication of the
Grand Lodge was at an Emergency Meeting held on 15th March, 1882, to
congratulate H. M. Queen Victoria on her escape from the hands of the assassin.
The next important- event in the Duke's career was his appointment, in 1878, to
the office - which he still holds - of Great Prior of the Order of the Temple in
Ireland, and then, after the lapse of a few years, he was, in 1886, appointed
and installed Provincial Grand Master of Sussex. The installation ceremony took
place on 22nd June of that year, in the Dome of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, in
the presence of one of the largest gatherings of Freemasons ever held in Sussex.
The Installing Master was again the Prince of Wales, who was assisted by the
late Lords Herschell and Beresford.
HE LEAVES FOR INDIA
Not long afterwards the Duke of Connaught left England for
India, where he had previously been in command of the Meerut District, to take
over the command of the forces in the Presidency of Bombay, but he was
fortunately able to return to England to take part in the state functions
connected with the celebration of the Jubilee of Queen Victoria as Sovereign of
the British Dominions. He was among the Masonic dignitaries of the Order who
attended the memorable meeting in the Royal Albert Hall, under the auspices of
his brother, the Prince of Wales, Grand Master, on 13th June, 1887, when an
Address of Congratulation was voted to Queen Victoria. Meanwhile the Duke of
Connaught had been appointed to the vacant position of District Grand Master of
Bombay, and had graciously taken charge of the dutiful Address of Congratulation
to the Queen on the attainment of her Jubilee, voted by the Bombay District
Grand Lodge, and he personally presented it to Her Majesty, it being the only
Address, save that voted by Grand Lodge, which was thus honored.
Since 1901 the Duke of Connaught has held the appointment
of First Grand Principal of Royal Arch Masonry and Grand Master of the Grand
Lodge of Mark Master Masons of England and Wales and the Colonies and
Dependencies of the British Crown. He is Permanent Soverign of the Connaught
Chapter of the Antient and Accepted Rite, meeting at Aldershot, as well as a
member of the 33rd degree of that body, of which he is also the Grand Patron. In
Knight Templary he was installed in the Duke of Connaught and Strathern
Preceptory, No. 153, in the United Provinces, India, and in 1901 he became
affiliated with the Connaught Preceptory, No. 172, meeting at the Officers' Club
House, Aldershot, of which he is the permanent Preceptor. He is also Grand
Master of the United Orders of the Temple and Hospital.
His interest in the various Masonic Institutions is no less
keen. In 1878 he presided at the eighteenth anniversary Festival of the Royal
Masonic Institution for Boys; in 1892 he acted in the same capacity for the
Royal Masonic Institution for Girls at the 104th anniversary Festival, while in
1897 he was pleased to preside at the annual Festival of the Royal Masonic
Benevolent Institution. He is Patron of all three Institutions. He has taken a
very deep interest in the formation of the Freemasons' War Hospital, and when
this Institution reverted to its original purpose of a Masonic Hospital and
Nursing Home, in 1920, he was the first to welcome the patients and to express a
hope and desire for their well-being.
His first and only personal appeal to the Craft as Grand
Master was on the occasion of the memorable Masonic Peace Celebration, in the
Royal Albert Hall, in 1919, when he originated the appeal for funds to raise a
Central Home for Freemasonry in the metropolis, which should be worthy not only
of the Craft in England, as the Mother Grand Lodge, but be a fitting memorial to
the many hundreds of brethren who gave their lives as a sacrifice in the Great
War.
In 1920 the Duke of Connaught took the place of his nephew,
Bro. H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, and went to India as the representative of
his King and country. While there he found time to grant audience to the
brethren of the several District Grand Lodges in India, and thus cemented bonds
in the world-wide fraternity. On his return to England he lost no time in paying
a visit to they communication of the United Grand Lodge of England, when he gave
an exceedingly interesting account of his travels. In the course of his remarks
he said:
"I had the very greatest pleasure in visiting the District
Grand Lodge of Madras, of Bengal, of the Punjab and of Bombay and I am sure you
would all have felt very proud and very much touched with the splendid welcome
they gave me in each of those cities. The Masons there were very keen and alert.
They were doing their duty, and were following the great precepts of our Craft.
Besides that, they were steadily increasing in numbers. I know of no part of the
British Empire where Masonry can be of greater use in cementing these good
feelings which should exist among the different nationalities, castes and creeds
than the great Empire of India. I am certain, from all I saw, and you may be
gratified to learn it, that everything was in good working order, and everywhere
I found zealousness and keenness. I found that charity was ever thought of, and
that the great precepts of Freemasonry were understood and carried out in the
best possible manner. It was a great satisfaction to me as Grand Master, to meet
the brethren of India again. You will remember that I was District Grand Master
of Bombay for five years, and I found that they had never forgotten me. They had
remembered the different occasions on which I had been with them, and I can
assure you that I was very much touched by the warmth of their reception. Each
lodge insisted on presenting me with a highly valued memento of my visit to
their respective District Grand Lodges.”
----o----
Great Men Who Were Masons
Louis Kossuth
By Bro. GEO. W. BAIRD, P.G.M., District of Columbia
LUJOS, or Louis, Kossuth, the celebrated Hungarian patriot
and liberator, was born in Monok, Hungary, in 1802, being Slavic in decent and
Lutheran in religion. Through his father, a lawyer, he obtained a good
education, including classic instruction in the Piarists school at Ujhely,
followed by a course at Eperies, completing with a legal and philosophical
training at the college of Patak, in the last named of which he was fostered in
a spirit of hatred for Austria.
Kossuth became well read in history and also in language,
knowing the various Magyar dialects well, and Slovak, German, French and Latin;
in later life he became very proficient in English. After leaving college he
rose from one position to another, early becoming noted as a liberal, was
popular with the middle class and was, for a period, manager of the large
estates of the Countess Szapary in Zemplein. In the diet of 1832-6 he was proxy
for a member in the upper house, possessing in that capacity a voice but no
vote. This experience was of some importance in his career because the diet
ranked among the more important assemblies of modern Hungary; and its debates,
following close upon the Polish tragedy of 1831, were watched with great
interest by the populace, especially by patriots, although any publication of
them was hindered by severe restrictions. The liberals, the party in opposition,
were persuaded by Kossuth to resort to the extraordinary means of a lithographed
newspaper which they called Orszaggyalesi tudosositasoz, meaning Parliamentary
Communications. Extracts and communications were dictated by Kossuth to a number
of copyists who lithographed the same, and this crude sheet obtained no little
circulation. Kossuth later became connected with another organ, but this venture
fell through when the government prohibited its publication, whereupon he had it
placed under the protection of the County of Pesth; but even so the government
again prohibited it. On May 2, 1837, Kossuth was tried for treason and sentenced
to four years in prison. On account of this move, great agitation developed
among the populace so that the liberals carried the elections for the next diet
of 1839-40. Because of this rise in power they were able to secure the release
of Kossuth and some of his fellow prisoners, a victory for liberal principles
which met with many popular demonstrations and rejoicings.
Kossuth was invited to use the columns of the Pesth-Hirlap
(Pesth Journal), a liberal venture started in January, 1841, with fewer than one
hundred subscribers. Within a very short time he had made this paper so popular
that its circulation increased by thousands and that in spite of the opposition
of the aristocracy and the clergy.
Count Stephen Szechenyi, of an old and aristocratic family,
denounced Kossuth as a dangerous agrarian and demagogue, in a book called Relet
Nepe (The Prople of the East). This Count, who was a kind of half liberal,
wished to give the people their liberty as a gift from above; Kossuth demanded
it as an inherent right and threatened to extort it by force if necessary. With
public opinion behind him, and encouragement from some powerful newspapers,
Kossuth was able to swing the election of 1843; but trouble developed in
connection with his own paper, the result of which was his removal from the
editor's chair, and the paper was transformed into an organ of the opposition.
The affair was what we would now call a "double cross."
Hungary was exhausted by a tariff cunningly devised to keep
it dependent on various German provinces; this was one of the principal
grievances of the mass of the people. Assisted by some of the nobility who for
family or other reasons were opposed to the Germans, Kossuth formed the
Vedegylet (a protective union) the members of which (both men and women) bound
themselves to use only home-made products when possible. Other societies took a
hand in it, and soon a general boycott was declared against German goods.
When the influences set loose by the French Revolution of
1848 were at their height, Kossuth proposed an address to the Emperor Ferdinand
of Austria urging the restoration of Hungary to its former independence. The
move was at last successful and Kossuth was received in the capital with the
honors of a liberator. Ferdinand entrusted Louis Batthyanyi with the forming of
an independent Hungarian Ministry in which Kossuth was made minister of finance.
To this office he directed all his energies, created a treasury, organized a
militia, formed many new battalions of-national soldiery, established armories
and generally aroused the spirit of the nation by proclamations, speeches and
articles, many of which he published in a new organ called Kossuth Hirlapja. But
dangers lay ahead. The south of Hungary was torn by racial struggles, also by
religious. As a result of these internal dissensions, the nation became engaged
in a quarrel with Italy, and Jellachich, with a large army, crossed the River
Drave with intent to subdue the country. Many members of the Hungarian ministry
resigned and others fled as the enemy approached the capital.
Russia and Austria joined in so that their combined forces
swept all resistance before them, although Kossuth created an army, raised money
and called upon the people to rally to the defense of their homes. On August 11,
1849, Kossuth resigned his powers in favor of Gorgey, who surrendered to Russia
two days afterward. Kossuth sought refuge in Turkey from which Austria and
Russia sought to capture him by means of extradition. Turkey, however,
encouraged by England and France, resisted the Russian and Italian threats.
After his wife and children had managed to join Kossuth he was able to get
aboard the U. S. Frigate Mississippi at Trieste Sept. 1, 1851, a vessel sent
there by the United States to bring him to this country. He visited Washington,
D. C., in 1852, where he was introduced on the floor of the Senate. He gave
speeches in many cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati
and Cleveland. He was made a Mason in Cincinnati Lodge, No. 133, Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1852. His admirers have raised a beautiful monument to his memory in
Cleveland, Ohio, and this has become a shrine for a large number of Hungarians
and their descendants and also for patriotic Americans who know his story and
love him for hip principles.
----o----
The Cable Tow
By Bro. HENRY TAYLOR, Missouri
IN the far off days before what we call civilization began
to be man had to combat the forces of nature with a slender outfit of tools,
instruments, and weapons. Each and every one of the few things he had wherewith
to work meant more to him, far more, than any tool or implement can possibly
mean to us. That may be one of the reasons for the symbolical meaning which
came to be attached to so many of the familiar every-day things used by
primitive man. It may be the explanation of the fact that the fibre or leather
rope which was used for countless purposes came to have so great a
significance. Some anthropologists believe that in the long period during which
man was gradually learning to domesticate animals the rope was almost the only
means whereby he was able to control them; accordingly that rope became for him
the very symbol of his mastery of brute nature, and often it stood between him
and starvation. Be this as it may - the theory is reasonable enough - the rope,
or cable, or thong, very early came to have symbolic and mystical meanings,
proving that men could use it with their imagination as well as with their
hands.
Ropes, cords, halters, etc., meant many things in ancient
religions and secret cults. In several of the religious cults of Nearer Asia,
the region from which radiated so many of the religious forces that profoundly
influenced our own religion, the center of the cult was a god, usually the sun
under a thin disguise, who was once a year hanged to a tree, there to die for
the sake of his people; for that reason the hanging rope became a sacred thing.
When a candidate was initiated in several of the mystery secret cults he was led
into the temple, often a dark cave, with a rope, and, in case he fainted away
from fright, as frequently happened, was dragged out by it. Druid priests often
wore a chain about the neck. Among some Brahmin cults members wore a cord,
either about the waist or the neck, to symbolize their spiritual rebirth. In
some of the medieval courts it was the custom to place a rope about the neck or
middle of an accused person to make him realize that he was at the mercy of the
court.
It is probable, judging from the very slender array of
facts available, that in nearly all the secret religions and fraternities of the
ancient and medieval world the rope was used for a more or less practical
purpose, though that practical use inevitably came to be associated with
symbolical meanings. Initiation has always been an ordeal, and must be, and
consequently it has usually been necessary to keep the candidate under absolute
control.
There has been much dispute among our scholars as to the
origin of the word "Cable Tow." Some trace it to a German root, others to Dutch,
a few to French and a few to a Hebrew term. Thus far there has been no general
agreement among them except that the term means some kind of a rope that is used
for drawing something, as when a scow is drawn along behind a tug, or a canal
boat is dragged by a horse. It is a cable by which a thing is towed along.
There has been an equal division of opinion as to the
meaning and use of the Cable Tow in Freemasonry. (It never appeared in any
dictionary until the Standard was issued, where it is given as a Masonic term,
and even so is erroneously described.) Albert Pike saw in it nothing but a
physical device for managing the candidate. Dr. Mackey seems to have agreed
with Pike. Lawrence saw in it a symbol of the Mystic Tie. Rowbottom made it to
mean Masonic duty, which is the moral tie. Others give it a quite geometrical
meaning and there are others still, as one would guess, who find in it a
thousand occult meanings.
The safest way to work one's self into the meaning of a
Masonic symbol is to trace the history of its use by the fraternity. I believe
it is a safe canon of Masonic interpretation that every symbol is interpreted by
its use. In English Masonry of two hundred years ago the Cable Tow appeared
only in the First Degree and then with no symbolical meaning at all. This would
indicate that in the older system of Operative Masonry it had nothing more than
a physical use. This surmise is strengthened by the fact that in English
Speculative Masonry of today the rope appears only in the Entered Apprentice
Degree, and is there explained as being a means for controlling the body of the
candidate.
When we pass over to our American system we discover a
significant fact. In the First Degree the Cable Tow is described in the same
way as in the corresponding section of that degree as worked by our English
brethren; but, and this is the significant matter, it also appears in the Second
and Third Degrees, in both of which it is given a quite symbolical meaning.
This appears to prove that the symbolical use of the Cable Tow grew up among
American lodges. Why it grew up there it is probably impossible to discover,
seeing that no records are made of such things, but we may guess that our
brethren added the Cable Tow to the two latter degrees in order to make the work
more symmetrical; that they gave to it such a symbolical meaning as most
naturally occurred to them, and that they let it remain in the First Degree as
it had been in order not to change things more than necessary.
What our brethren had in mind when they gave the Cable Tow
a place in our system of symbols is made perfectly clear, it seems to me, by the
few words of interpretation which are given in each of the two latter degrees.
The Cable Tow is the symbol of all those forces and compulsions which regulate a
man's conduct from without; it is not removed until the man is able to control
and govern himself from within. As a physical thing it is set over in
opposition to that Mystic Tie which isn't a physical thing at all, but inward
disposition of the mind and heart. This, if we will consider it aright, is a
summons to examine into certain truths which it is of the utmost importance to
us that we clearly understand.
It is self-evident that men, being as they are, cannot be
held together in an orderly society without the systematic use of force,
understanding by force those secular methods whereby the law enforces itself -
police, courts, penitentiaries, fines and the military system. It is an
unfortunate thing that this should be so, for it is the most barbarous side of
social life, but it seems unavoidable, for there are so many men and women of an
unsocial nature who, without the restraint of force, would soon throw the whole
social system into anarchy.
Tolstoy held this to be a fallacy. He believed that if we
would do away with policemen, constables, marshals, courts, armies and navies
there might ensue, a period of disorder but that after a while the normal
commonsense of the majority would reassert itself to restore peace and order.
Force degrades our nature. The law's methods make more criminals than they
cure. Armies lead to war. Not to fight the devil with fire, not to return blow
for blow, but to practice non-resistance, that, so it seemed to him, would lead
us all after a time to live a more neighbourly existence. Many agree with
Tolstoy, and more agree with him up to a point, the pacifists for example; and
there is no question but that force does, in a certain way, degrade our nature,
but it must be remembered that social force exists not only to punish crime but
also to regulate the actions of men in a world which is so complicated that no
individual can find his way about in it undirected. Tax laws, for example, are
not penal in their nature but they are necessary, and the great majority would
pay no taxes were they not compelled; and as much may be said of many other
matters. Furthermore, if laws were laid aside, and policemen dismissed, it
would not be long before men, women and children would be kept in control by
some other similar social force so that in the long run little would be gained.
Men must wear the Cable Tow.
But it is all-important in this connection to note that the
uses of external force, though necessary, are very limited, and that because it
has no method whatever for penetrating into the hidden springs of human
conduct. It can't get at our motives. It has no way of controlling our private
characters, or of moving the heart. A man may keep the public laws, at least he
may very successfully escape all punishments by law and yet know nothing of
those other laws which wield a different kind of compulsion and have no power of
inflicting punishment of a physical character - the law of kindliness, of
brotherliness, of forgiveness, of love, of purity and righteousness. The whole
system of social force is at best a cumbersome thing which touches life at few
points. It is easily evaded and avoided, and there are whole regions of life
where it cannot come at all.
The man who knows no other law of conduct than that which
backs the policeman and the penitentiary is an inferior man. In the eyes of
Freemasonry he is a profane, one who has never been initiated into the secrets
of manhood. Those secrets are in the heart. They belong to thoughts, ideals,
feelings, motives, impulses, aspirations, hopes and all that world which is
hidden away in the soul from which a man's walk and character are determined.
If a man is controlled from without, and doesn't steal from us merely because
the law watches, how are we to know that he will not break into the house when
he thinks the law does not see him? If he tells the truth only to escape losing
his business or his reputation, how are we to believe him when these things are
absent? If his conduct is regulated by forces outside himself, will he be or do,
how are we to know what he will be or do, when he chances to come into some
place, those external forces are not operative? Such a man is one who is led
about by a Cable Tow. But the Master Man, as Freemasonry depicts him, is one
whose conduct is regulated from within. He has the law in his heart. There is a
court in his conscience, a government in his soul. Wherever he is, and under
what ever circumstances, he will remain an upright man because his rectitude is
a thing of his nature. The Cable Tow which binds him to the social and moral
order, and which holds him to his duty, has passed inward and become a mystical
thing of the spirit.
So also with his love. Many there are who know how to be
very brotherly and sociable when they find themselves in a brotherly atmosphere,
but whose kindliness withers up outside that air; he who is truly a Master Mason
will have love in his heart, and from his heart it will flow to his brethren
wherever and whatever they may be. A Cable Tow of affection reaches to them,
nothing can break it, nothing can loosen its, hold.
What is the length of this Cable Tow? It is as long as the
arm that stretches out a helping hand. It reaches as far as a brother's
cheering voice. It goes as far as charity's dollar can go. It can travel as
far as good will can travel. Wherever the mails can carry a letter it can be
carried. The length of a Master Mason's Cable Tow is precisely equal to the
extent of his influences.
----o----
THE STUDY CLUB
Chapters of Masonic History
By Bro. H.L. HAYWOOD, Editor THE BUILDER
PART VII. FREEMASONRY AND THE GILD SYSTEM
1. THE GILD SYSTEM IN GENERAL
WHEN the Angles and Saxons settled in ancient England
(Britain it was then called) they at first maintained their military form of
organization, so that each settlement was a kind of camp; but as time went on
and villages became permanent, a civil form of social order began slowly to
evolve. The first step in this was the institution of the kin-bond, wherein
blood relatives stood together for support and protection, the individual and
his family being mutually responsible. This gave way in the course of time to
voluntary associations founded not on blood relationship but on community ties,
existing to protect the individual against the group, to preserve order in the
settlement, and for a variety of similar purposes. These associations,
described as "artificial" in contrast to the "natural" bond of blood, were the
first gilds in England, in virtue of which fact it cannot be said that anybody
ever "discovered" or "invented" gilds; they grew out of natural conditions in
response to social necessity, just as they had come into existence among the
Greeks and Romans centuries before, the former calling them "thiassoi", etc.,
the latter, "collegia". It is generally believed by the more dependable
authorities that it is very possible that there may have been some historical
continuity between the gilds of early England and the Roman collegia, but the
historical remains of the period are too scanty to enable us to make sure on
that point. If such a continuity ever existed it was more probable in Italy,
where the collegia longest endured, and which, like most other European
countries, had a gild system of its own.
The word "gild" (sometimes spelled "guild") continues to
be a puzzle so far as its etymology is concerned. The North Germans had "geld",
meaning money; the Danish, "gilde", a religious feast in honour of the god Odin;
the Anglo-Saxons, "gild", from same root as "yield", and meaning a fixed payment
of money; the Bretons "gouil", a feast or holiday; the Welsh "gmylad", a
festival. In later times, when gilds became everywhere common, the North
Germans used the word "gild"; the South Germans, "zunft"; the French, "metier";
and the Italians, "arte". In the sixteenth century England the word was
generally superseded by "company", "corporation" or "mystery", the last name
derived from the Latin "ministerium", or trade, and having no reference to
anything mysterious, being preserved in our usage to this day, as when we speak
of the arts, parts and mysteries of Freemasonry.
The first gilds, as it is believed, were organized in
Italy. In France they were very common before Charlemagne, and are first
mentioned in the Carolingian Capitularies of 779 and 789. Commercial and craft
gilds began to become common in France, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and
Sweden in the eleventh century. The oldest known ordinances, as the written
laws for the government of a gild were called, occur in England in the eleventh
century. The gild principle proved so successful and was applied to so many
uses that by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it became the outstanding
feature of the social and economic life of Europe.
One of the commonest early uses of that principle was in
the "frith", or peace, gilds, which became very popular in North Europe in the
sixth century - the Vikings organized then to suppress piracy - and in England
the century later, where they were referred to in the Laws of Ine. These were
voluntary associations of men organized for mutual defense, to supplement
defective laws, and to police the community in a period when national
governments were not known and when the authority of the town was very weak. We
saw this system at work in our own land under pioneer conditions, as in the case
of the Vigilantes, and even today, in spite of our elaborate machinery for the
enforcement of law and the protection of citizens, impatient men in some
communities strive to make or enforce law by similar methods.
In the course of time gilds multiplied until they came to
be used for every conceivable purpose, for good-fellowship, for drinking, for
insuring a decent burial, for worship, for hunting, travel, art and for banking;
priests and friars organized, sailors, travelers, woodsmen and shepherds; there
were gilds for men, women, children, for rich and for poor, in the country and
in the town. Functions now performed by government, armies, schools, stores,
factories, hospitals, trade unions, and most of the other innumerable forms into
which social organization has differentiated itself, were then held in keeping
by gilds.
The typical gild had prayers for the dead; a common chest
for incidental upkeep and for the relief of the widows and orphans of deceased
members; periodical meetings, with banquets; admitted members on an oath,
sometimes two; administered fines; adopted ordinances for the regulation of its
own activities; punished members for improper conduct, and co-operated in many
ways with the town or national governments. Most of these societies were small,
the largest on record being the Corpus Christi gild at York, which once boasted
of 15,000 members. Sometimes many gilds in a community consolidated, but there
was never a country-wide merger. Of the city of London there is record of one
gild in 1130; of eighteen in 1180, and of 110 in 1422. In the time of Edward
III there were listed more than 40,000 religious and trade gilds in England; the
census of 1389 showed 909 in Norfolk alone. This proliferation received its
first serious set-back during the Reformation when Henry VIII despoiled all
religious gilds; it died down rapidly with the advent of the capitalist system,
and came to a dead stop, except in a few unimportant instances, in the last
century. France prohibited them in 1789-91; Spain and Portugal, 1833-40;
Austria and Germany, 1859-60; Italy, 1864; Scotland, where the development had
followed Continental lines, in 1846, and England in 1835.
In its heyday the gild system was very closely connected
with the church, so closely that some writers credit the church with its origin;
almost every gild had its patron saint, before whose image it kept a candle
burning, and many set aside sums of money for the sustenation of a priest, the
maintenance of a chapel and for masses, chantries, church charities and church
schools. Oftentimes a gild had its own chaplain, and a very large number, as
already noted, were devoted exclusively to religious purposes; these religious
fraternities were suppressed in England in 1547, and other gilds were at the
same time forbidden to give money to churches. A number of the Roman Catholic
fraternities now existing are lineal descendants of the old religious gilds.
Partly as a result of their alliance with the church many
gilds, otherwise devoted to purely secular pursuits, participated in pageants
and in mystery, morality and miracle plays, the forerunners of our modern
drama. These plays were staged on wagons drawn in a "procession" from one
exhibition point to another across the town, and always it was a day of
excitement when they were shown, and vast crowds gathered. Expenses were
divided among the gilds and parts allotted, as at Norwich, where the mercers,
drapers and haberdashers presented the creation of the world; the grocers,
Paradise; the smiths, the fight between David and Goliath; or as at Hereford,
the glovers gave Adam and Eve; the carpenters, Noah's ship; the tailors, the
three kings, etc. It is of record that on a few instances parts were taken by
gilds of Masons. I am of the opinion that the drama of our Third Degree may
very probably have been originally an old mystery play, which may have found its
way to us through some Masons' gild that participated in it.
It used to be the fashion to say that the gild corporation
and the town corporation were identical, or that the former gradually
metamorphosed into the latter, a view given a very wide circulation by Brentano;
this idea has been abandoned. There was always a close connection between town
government and gild government, but the two were always distinct, except
possibly in two or three negligible instances. In many cases a man had to be a
gild member before he could become a citizen, but the gild ordinances were
always subordinate to the town authority. The manner in which the gilds
governed themselves will be described later.
It is a remarkable fact, and one worthy of especial remark
to us Masons, that many gilds accepted men not at all engaged in the craft as
patrons or as a means of bestowing an honour or some special privilege.
"Indeed," writes one of the best authorities, E. Lipson, "the members of many
London companies frequently came to have only a very faint connection with the
business of the company to which they were attached," a fact that makes it
easier for us to understand how non-operatives came to be admitted into the old
Masonic gilds, or lodges. "They included in their membership," writes another
authority, "most of the wealthy men of the nation, and the great [gild] halls
now standing in the city of London testify to the proud names with which they
are so generously decorated that the men who made England what she was, the men
who built her commerce, won her wealth and risked their lives and fortunes in
extending England's commercial supremacy, were mighty in the gilds." Henry IV,
Henry VI and Henry VIII were gild members, so also Edward III, who belonged to a
gild of armourers. There is therefore nothing extraordinary in the fact that
Elias Ashmole and other worthies of his time sought membership among the
operative masons.
II. THE MERCHANT GILDS
The gild system in general had two grand periods of
development, the first of which culminated in the merchant gilds, as were called
those associations formed in all the towns (save a few, among which was London)
for the purpose of managing and controlling trading and commerce. Such a gild
included all engaged in a given kind of commerce, including wage-earners as well
as proprietors, and the object was to enable the merchants to maintain a
monopoly of, and an efficient organization of, all the merchandising in a given
community. These organizations grew apace and waxed powerful and became in time
the foster parents of English commerce; more than 100 towns in England and
seventy in Ireland and Wales had them. They reached their zenith in the twelfth
century, began to disappear in the fourteenth century and were almost completely
superseded by craft gilds in the fifteenth century.
Merchant gilds engaged in so many activities, some private,
some public, that it is impossible to describe them in full; among the most
important of their functions was the control of import and export of wares; the
limiting of the number permitted in any trade; the regulation of wages and
prices, and the inspection and standardization of goods. Every member had to pay
"scot" and "lot", as the general taxes were called, and take oath to obey the
rulers and ordinances, as well as contribute his annual dues. As a reward for
his membership he was privileged to share in business transactions and in
bargains, and was given a "status" in the community very much coveted. If he
fell ill he was cared for; his family was looked after in case of his death; in
unemployment he was helped to find a position, and he was protected against
quarrels and unjust dealings. The gild was governed by an alderman ("elder man")
and his associates, two or four in number; it had its own treasury; passed its
own ordinances; could fine or otherwise punish its members; and in some
instances had its own court. At periodical meetings - called "morning speeches"
- the brethren passed or revised ordinances, admitted new members, feasted and
elected officers.
As industry developed in scope and complexity it became
increasingly difficult for these gilds merchant to retain their monopolies;
gradually there grew up a new system to supersede the old, known as craft gilds,
in which not commerce but a handicraft was the unit; there was a struggle
between the new system and the old, but the old at last gave way and in the
fifteenth century ceased to be. Craft gilds were not, as has often been
alleged, the offspring of the merchant gilds, for there was no organic
connection between them; they were variously two similar but quite distinct and
separate developments of the gild principle due to economic changes.
III. CRAFT GUILDS
"The primary purpose of the craft gild was to establish a
complete system of industrial control over all who were associated together in
the pursuit of a common calling." The merchant gild, working usually in the
smaller towns, organized a whole industry; the craft gilds, springing up
everywhere, from London to almost every hamlet, organized each separate part of
every industry, or vocation, as an independent entity. For example, where the
merchant gild had organized the leather business as a whole, craft gilds broke
it up into specialties, so that tanners, saddle makers, harness makers, bridle
makers, shoe makers, slipper makers, boot makers, etc., had each their own
fraternity. This high degree of specialization was extended to the arts, to
social interests, amusements and education; it was even extended to religion, so
that in one church might be a gild of priests, of musicians, of singers, of
actors in the mystery play, and a gild to look after the altar besides to see
that it was properly dressed with rich cloths and its candles always burning.
The gilds devoted wholly to some one handicraft performed
an astonishing number of functions and became a little family world to each
member in which he found his social fellowship, his school, his business, his
hospital, his sick, health and life insurance, protection against enemies,
employment bureau, a court to which to be responsible for his conduct and laws
and ordinances for controlling his conduct. The old debate among Masonic
writers as to whether the medieval operative Masonic gilds possessed any
"speculative" elements would seem to be singularly beside the point; every gild
was full of "speculative" elements, even the pig drivers and sheep herders, who,
like the rest had their patron saints, their religious festivals and burned a
candle at the altar.
"Many free grammar schools were founded and maintained by
the gilds," writes Lipson, in his excellent Economic History, "which formed one
of the main sources of education in the Middle Ages; and one gild, that of
Corpus Christi, Cambridge, perpetuated its memory by founding the famous college
that still bears its name. In this way the gilds contributed to the spread of
learning, and the voluntary efforts of artisans helped to keep burning the lamp
of knowledge." He could have added many more examples. Dean Colet turned over
to a gild the management of his St. Paul's school. William Shakespeare secured
his "little Latin and less Greek" at a gild school in Stratford-on-Avon.
Many writers have described craft gilds as "the trade
unions of the Middle Ages", but this is most inaccurate. As Sidney and Beatrice
Webb have stated so clearly in their magnificent History of Trade Unions there
was no connection whatever between the two, and only a superficial resemblance.
The craft gild was a quasi-public body, often so interwoven with municipal
government that learned writers have confused the two; it controlled trade not
in the interests of workmen merely but of all, the public included; membership
in it was compulsory, and so recognized by local and national laws; its ranks
included employers as well as employed, and these two groups did not come into
conflict until later, with the rise of journeymen's gilds; it accepted into
membership only trained men, all others, servants, etc., being left outside and
considered as "cowans"; it was a purely local institution, with a territory
limited by the community boundaries; and in addition to the regulation of wages,
hours and general trade conditions, it was also engaged, as described above, in
many activities of a purely social character, and unrelated to the trade itself.
At the head of the typical gild were the wardens, two or
four, usually elected by the assembly but sometimes appointed by the mayor,
holding office for one year, whose duty it was to supervise the work turned out
by the craft and to see that certain standards were maintained. The assembly
usually met once a year, but sometimes four times, and at stated intervals. The
gild often had its own court and members were admitted on oath. The general
membership was divided into the three grades of masters, journeymen (fellow
crafts) and apprentices, but any journeyman might become a master so that, so
far as skill was concerned, there were only two classes. Women were admitted
into many gilds and were permitted to take apprentices and to hire journeymen.
The most admirable feature in the whole gild system was the
institution called apprenticeship, which was a method for training youths in
their vocation never since surpassed and not often equalled. A boy was
"indentured", or contracted, to some master for a term of years, which in
earlier times might last from one to ten years, but in 1563 was everywhere (in
England) fixed at seven years. The master furnished bed and board, technical
training, sometimes a small salary, sometimes schooling, supervised his conduct,
and generally stood to the boy in loco parentis; the boy in his turn was obliged
to be no bondsman, of good physique, a faithful workman and alive to his
master's welfare. The beginnings of this system have been traced to 1260; it
became a vital part of the whole economic system in the thirteenth century.
Apprentices were usually registered with the town authorities and otherwise
given a recognized status in the community. The terms and experiences of his
position passed into popular speech, remaining in use until the present day,
coloured all social thinking, and often was celebrated in literature, as in
Goethe's Wilhelm Maister.
The apprentice custom, as the reader will already have
discerned, remains imbedded in our own Masonic system to remind us that a
candidate for our "mystery" stands as much in need of training as the youth of
old times who knocked at the door of a gild; if our statesmen and rulers ever
come to understand Masonry as they should, and its possibilities in the world,
the reconstitution of the apprentice system in our Fraternity, and a more
thorough and intelligent use of it, will be one of their first concerns. To
expect a man to be able to understand or practice Freemasonry without adequate
preparation is a ridiculous now as it was when Masonic gilds were devoted to
architecture and the building crafts. We are not called on to raise fabrics of
wood and stone into the sky, but ours is an even more difficult task, for it is
our duty to build manhood and to reorganize the whole world into the forms of
brotherhood, surely a high calling, and demanding skilled workmen!
The time of his indenture completed, the apprentice
graduated into the ranks of the journeymen, becoming thereby a fellow of the
craft, i.e., entitled to its liberties and privileges on equal terms with all
others. This passing to a higher grade was signalized by some proof of his
skill a "masterpiece" in many cases or an examination before the wardens.
(Wardens were known as "deacons" in Scotland, whence some of our Masonic
nomenclature was derived.) In Europe the young journeyman went out on a "wander
tour" in order to see something of the world and of the practices of his craft
in other places, but this custom never secured a foothold in England; usually
(in some cases compulsorily) a journeyman (sometimes called yoeman, "young man")
hired himself out to some master for two or three years at wages and then, with
a little money of his own, set up in his own shop, hired journeymen, indentured
apprentices and became a master.
In the course of time the masters, being the moneyed class,
tended to arrogate to themselves more and more power and to adopt legislation in
their own interests, and the journeymen, as their numbers increased, learned to
combine to secure their own interests, especially after a permanently wage
earning class was developed. Upon this journeymen began to form gilds of their
own, often in despite of the authorities, a thing that became quite common by
the fifteenth century. On the continent, especially in the industrial centers
and in Germany, this conflict between masters and men often broke out into
pitched battles with much shedding of blood (the Medici family emerged from such
a welter to the control of Florence), but in England the struggle was more
quiet. By the sixteen seventeenth century journeymen gilds were quite subdued
and content to remain subordinate to the masters who grew more and more
oligarchical. In many of the large cities the masters secured all control in
their own hands, and gradually, with the coming of modern capitalism and
manufacturing and the whole gild system gradually rise of nationalism the whole
gild system broke up and quietly passed away. Some of the craft societies still
survived so late as the latter half of the eighteenth century, but their
privileges were formally and finally abolished by parliament in 1835.
The study of the medieval Masonic gilds from which
Freemasonry evolved, or at least with which it has at least a certain amount of
historical continuity, must be reserved for another chapter, as demanding more
space reserved than is here available. In the present connection it is not
necessary to call a Masonic reader's attention to the fact that whatever that
historical connection may have been and to what extent our modern craft is
indebted to the old gild system, Freemasonry was in its beginning of a piece
with that system and inherited many things from it, so that it is quite
impossible to understand our Fraternity today apart from the craft gilds of old
in which apprentices, fellow crafts and masters united in the one hand, toiled
and lived together in brotherhood to the end that the word might be served and
themselves enabled to earn masters' wages and to perfect themselves in their
mystery.
WORKS CONSULTED IN PREPARING THIS ARTICLE
A. Abram, English Life and Manners in Later Middle Ages. J.
DeW. Addison. Arts and Crafts in Middle Ages. Ars. Quatuor Coronatorum, II,
159; II, 165; V, 125; IX, 28; XV, 153; XV, 197. F. Armitage, The Guilds of
England. W. J. Ashley, An Introduction to English Economic History. E. Bain,
Merchant and Craft Gilds. L. Brentano On the History and Development of Gilds.
H.M. Chadwick, Studies of Anglo-Saxon Institutions. E.K. Chambers. The Medieval
Stage. Jas. Coiston, Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh. H.C. Coote, The Romance
of Britain. W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce. W.Denton,
England in the Fifteenth Century. O.J. Dunlap, English Apprenticeship and Child
Labour. Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol XII, 14. E.A. Freeman, History of the
Norman Conquest of Freemasonry; R.F.Gould, Concise History of Freemasonry;
History of Freemasonry. N.S.B. Gras, Introduction to Economic History. A.S.
Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century J.R. Green, Short History of the
English People. C. Gross, Bibliography of British Municipal History; Gild
Merchant. J.L. and B. Hammond, The Village Laborer. M.D. Harris, Story of
Coventry. James Hasting, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VI. W.C.
Hazlitt, Livery Companies of City of London. K. Hegel, Stadte und Gilden. F.A.
Hibbert, Influence and Development of English Gilds. A. Jessop, Coming of the
Friars. J.J. Jugseiand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. S. Kramer,
English Craft Gilds and the Government. J.M. Lambert, Two Thousand Years of
Gild Life. Lethaby, Medieval Art. E. Lipson, Economic History of England. A.S.
McBride, Speculative Masonry. Machiavelli. Florentine History. Mackey, Revised
History of Freemasonry. A.L. Miller, Notes on the Early History and Records of
the Lodge, Aberdeen 1 ter. H.B. Morse, Gilds of China. A.W. Pollard, English
Miracle Plays. M.B. Reekitt, Meaning of National Guilds. George Renard, Guilds
in the Middle Ages. J.E.T. Rogers, Economic Interpretation of History. H.G.
Selfridge, Romance of Commerce. L.T. Smith, York Mystery Plays. T. Smith,
English Gilds. Edgcumb Staley, The Guilds of Florence, J. Thomson, An Essay on
English Municipal History. G. Unwin, Gilds and Companies of England. L.Vibert,
Story of the Craft. P. Vinagradoff, Edtr., Oxford Studies in Social and Legal
History. A.E. Waite, New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. Ward, Freemasonry and the
Ancient Gods. S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism. H. Zimmern, The Hansa
Towns.
FREEMASONRY AND THE GILD SYSTEM
Supplementary References
Mackey's Encyclopedia (Revised Edition)
Adoptive Masonry, 24-30; Apprentice, 70-72; Architecture,
75; Assembly, 83; Cowans, 183; Craft, 184; Craftsman, 184; Deacon, 197-198;
Fellow Crafts, 261-262; Female Masons, 262; Foreign Country, 269; Gilds,.
296-297; Journey, 373; Journeyman, 373; Master, 473-476; Mysteries, 497-500;
Roman Colleges of Artificers, 630-634; Wages, 834.
A NOTE ON THE COMACINES
I have recently encountered a note on the Comacine Masters
which should be included with the chapter on that subject published in this
department last month. It was contributed by A. L. Frothingham to "Dictionary
of Architecture and Building", edited by Russell Sturgis; the article is headed
"Guilds" and is, so far as I could discover, the solitary reference in that work
to Freemasonry. Having no competence in etymology I am unable to pass judgment
on Mr. Frothingham's theory, but am under the impression that etymologists in
general would not agree with him. Further light on the point will be
appreciated. Students will do well to read the article in its entirety; in the
present connection there is space for only one paragraph:
"A great deal of grave nonsense has been written by grave
authorities on these magistri commacini; chapters and even volumes have been
based on the supposition that Commacine means 'a native of Como,' and that this
region was so specifically the center of the revival of architecture under the
Lombards as to give its name to the profession of architect; master from Como =
architect. Such a fact would be without a parallel and is, besides, an
etymological blunder. The word com-macinus is from the same stem as macio, the
common Latin word for stonemason, with the addition of the collective prefix,
and may also be connected with the current Byzantine word for practical
architect, mechanicos." - H.L.H.
----o----
IN WHAT SENSE INFALLIBILITY IS CLAIMED
FOR THE POPE
I have often wondered if Roman Catholics have the same idea
about the infallibility of the pope that outsiders have. Where can one find the
Roman Church's own official definition of papal infallibility ?
S.K.S., Oregon
The dogma of papal infallibility was defined by the Vatican
Council held in Rome 1869-1870, and reads in this fashion: "Therefore faithfully
adhering to the traditions of the Christian faith, which has come down to us
from the beginning …. we teach and define it to be a doctrine divinely revealed,
that the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra - that is, when he in the
exercise of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians' by virtue of his
supreme Apostolic authority, defines a doctrine regarding faith and morals to be
held by the Universal Church, by the divine assistance promised him in Blessed
Peter, possesses that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His
Church to be endowed in the definition of a doctrine regarding faith or morals."
This means that he is infallible only when he speaks as
pope, and not as a private individual when as pope he gives the official
definition of a doctrine; when he treats of faith and morals or matters vitally
related thereto; and when he makes it clearly understood that he is promulgating
a decision binding "on the universal church." What this amounts to is that he
acts as the register or mouth-piece of the church, in its official capacity, and
that, according to the idea, the church itself is infallible. The infallibility
of the pope developed out of the infallibility of the church, the former dogma
was not officially accepted until 1870, the latter has been held in Roman
communion for many centuries.
----o----
EDITORIAL
INTRODUCING BROTHER F. H. LITTLEFIELD
At an annual meeting of the National Masonic Re. search
Society held at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Oct. 4, 1923, the Board of Stewards, after a
minute and comprehensive canvass of all our activities, decided that it would be
wise to so reorganize our machinery of management as to make for increased
efficiency and economy, as well as to guarantee t h a t the future of the
Society be absolutely secure. To that end it was arranged that the general
offices of the Society be retained at Cedar Rapids, with Brother C. C. Hunt as
General Secretary, and that the publication office of THE BUILDER, membership
offices, financial offices, and all other activities appertaining to the
business management of the Society's affairs be removed to St. Louis to be under
the care of Brother F. H. Littlefield, who at that meeting was chosen executive
head.
The duties devolving on the executive head of this Society
require that he possess a combination of qualifications not often found. He must
have managerial and business ability, experience with publishing, a first‑hand
knowledge of Masonry in its many aspects, and a heartfelt dedication to a task
that entails a considerable amount of financial and moral responsibility,
without hope of fee or reward. In Brother F. H. Littlefield, our Board of
Stewards found these qualifications very fully developed, and were fortunate in
being able to secure his services. As president of the STANDARD MASONIC
PUBLISHING COMPANY, editor and proprietor of THE MISSOURI FREEMASON, and for
many years intensely active in all the Masonic bodies in Missouri, as well as
several important business concerns. he possesses the ideal experience and
equipment for the managing head of this Society. It is an honor to introduce him
to our members and readers, a pleasure to be associated with him, and it is safe
to predict for him a successful outcome of his labors, now already begun, in the
development and expansion of our work.
H. L. HAYWOOD, Editor.
* * *
SALUTATORY
Having been commissioned by the National Masonic Research
Society to assume a large portion of the practical executive duties in
connection with this Society and in the publication of THE BUILDER, I feel that
a brief statement of our present plans and hopes for the future should be given
to our membership.
The National Masonic Research Society is a corporate body
(not for pecuniary profit) existing solely for the purpose of fostering Masonic
education, research, thought and expression. We desire that each member and
reader should be fully informed as to the democratic character of its
organization, and in a succeeding number we propose to publish its Articles of
Incorporation and By-Laws for your information.
From its inception, nearly nine years ago, one of its
principal operations has been the editing and publishing of THE BUILDER as the
official journal of the Society. It has made a splendid reputation in the world
of Masonic thought and literature, attracting contributions from the ablest
Masonic thinkers and writers of the time.
THE BUILDER, and the business offices of the Society, are
now removed from Cedar Rapids to St. Louis, with all the collected manuscripts,
library and equipment intact. Ample provision is made for its valuable reference
library and its editorial and research departments. Its new offices are in the
Railway Exchange, the largest office building in the world. The material
resources and conveniences are in no way impaired, and we expect them to develop
improvement in the future.
More important is the continuation of the high standard of
Masonic journalism that THE BUILDER has established. To this we pledge our most
sincere efforts. Everything will carry on as before. There will be no diminution
in our various services to the Craft. Brother H. L. Haywood is here with us as
Editor-in-chief and will enlarge the staff of our associate editors with talent
from all parts of the Masonic world.
THE BUILDER will continue to function as the official
journal of the Society. It will not enter the field of competitive or commercial
journalism, or lend itself to any personal or political propaganda. It can exist
on our present membership through an indefinite future, and as that membership
increases it will augment its services to the Craft and improve its editorial,
artistic and typographical qualities in every way possible.
In removing our headquarters to St. Louis the Society will
not lose its contact with the many faithful brethren of the Grand Lodge of Iowa,
the parent of Masonic research in the United States. Brothers Parvin, Hunt,
Block and Moses continue their connection with our Society and THE BUILDER, and
through their kind co-operation we are assured full use of the matchless
resources of that very valuable institution, the Iowa Masonic Library.
I am frank to say, and I say it with all sincerity, that
though I had long been a member and somewhat familiar with its activities, I
have been agreeably surprised to discover just how extensive the work of the
Society is, how far its influence reaches, how many brethren are engaged in
special work under its direction; this, coupled with the fact that the
membership is so loyal, inspires me to believe that we have a great future
before us. There is a family feeling among us all, a feeling that THE BUILDER
belongs to each and every one, and that each member is in a sense an editor and
contributor; I shall hope to see that spirit continue, deepen and grow.
F.H. Littlefield
* * *
A TEMPLE OF LIGHT
By the time these words are in print the cornerstone of the
George Washington National Memorial will have been laid, surely, if one will
consider it all around, the most notable cornerstone laying since American
Masonry began to be, and the most impressive, both for the brilliancy of the
assembly of Masons in attendance and for the abiding significance of the
structure itself. Like one of the great towers that stood at the harbors of old
Greece and Rome to guide the sea-weary ships to their goal, it will lift its
galleries far above Alexandria, where Washington lived, and above the proud
capital also called after his name, a striking testimony before millions of eyes
to the presence of Freemasonry in the nation’s midst, itself a house of memory,
a temple of light.
Inside the memorial will be rooms for lodges, chapters,
commanderies and consistories, offices for the Memorial Association, libraries,
museums, an art gallery, an auditorium, and a replica of the Alexandria lodge
room of 1802 to contain the Masonic mementoes of Washington, as precious as they
are priceless. The exterior will express the spirit of these activities, and the
whole together will stand a monument of national unity in memory of him who made
the nation.
By the same token it will visibly embody Masonic unity
also, a proof that if the Craft is divided by its jurisdictional machinery into
forty-nine Grand Lodges, it is united into one jurisdiction by the
indivisibility of its spirit, everywhere the same, and growing more and more
self-conscious. There is no need for a national Grand Lodge; we are already a
national Grand Lodge, albeit, like the Grand Lodge above, "it has to be seen in
a certain way, under certain conditions. Some people never see it at all. You
must understand, this is no dead pile of stones and unmeaning timber. It is a
living thing"; living and life-giving.
Everywhere in the land, on every night, Masons meet, of all
creeds and classes, from the youngest Entered Apprentice, talking about the
Shrine, to the whitest veteran discussing Morals and Dogma; in little brick
buildings, on the coast of Maine; in the rocky valleys of Massachusetts; on the
sand stretches of Florida; along the maple shaded streets of Indiana villages;
in windy towns on the wheat lands of the Dakotas; in sparse little settlements
of the intermountain countries; in the new cities and old villages of
California; in adobe towns on the red deserts of the Southwest; in the old
cities of Louisiana; here, there, everywhere, up and down a great land, these
companies of chosen men are building a brotherhood on the mother rock far
underneath the jealousies that make war on the surface. What a quiet,
unobtrusive, gentle brotherhood it is, silently weaving the nation together,
helping to create the American soul! Its moral idealism filters into every nook
and corner, softens men's hearts even when they are least aware, and helps to
hold the world together. It is this spirit brooding in the heart of the Craft
that is uttering itself in the great Memorial now building, and makes it a shaft
of unity, a temple of light, more than any mere pile of steel and marble could
ever be.
----o----
THE LIBRARY
A VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION TO MASONIC HISTORY
NOTES ON EARLY HISTORY AND RECORDS OF THE LODGE, ABERDEEN,
by A. L. Miller, P. M. May be purchased through the publisher, Aberdeen
University Press, Ltd. 6 Upperkirkgate, Aberdeen, Scotland. Price, 5/.
THOUGH it contains only 74 pages, this little book, printed
beautifully on fine paper and bound in Quaker gray cloth, is more justly
entitled to a place on the Masonic student's five-foot shelf of books than many
a more ambitious volume that is often found there, and that because it is solid
substance all through, which is more than can be said of so many Masonic
volumes, often built on hearsay and padded out with windy rhetoric. R. F. Gould
said of the records of Aberdeen Lodge that "some are unsurpassed by any others
of a similar character in interest and value." The first known record of any
kind of Mason in the old Scotch city is of date 1264. It is said that St. John's
Masonry was introduced in 1357. The old memorials of the burgh, beginning in
1398, refer to many Masons. "Lodge" (spelled "loge") is first mentioned in 1483,
the earliest record of the word in the Scottish Craft.
The magistrates of the town issued to the lodge a Seal of
Cause, or charter, in 1521, thus incorporating it. There is a record of a warden
being appointed with jurisdiction over three counties in 1590. From 1587 on the
other crafts federated and worked under one set of officers with a convener’s
court, but the "Mason Lodge" remained apart and maintained a jurisdiction over
its own affairs. This fact is worthy of note as being one of many similar
instances where the Operative Masons maintained a stubborn independence as
regards other gilds and sometimes, it appeared, as regards town authorities; in
some cases there seems to have been some friction engendered and town
authorities forbade the organization of a Mason gild. The Aberdeen Lodge had
active enemies, certain clergy among them, a fact, it is possible, that explains
why it two or three times lost its own building by fire.
The Aberdeen Masons had a building of their own, other than
their temporary work huts, as early as 1483 and it is believed by some
authorities that the lodge of that date never ceased to exist so that Aberdeen
Lodge of today may boast of a great antiquity. W. J. Hughan, the most cautious
of Masonic historians, held it to be of a date not later than 1570 at least.
The present lodge's most precious possession is the old
Mark Book, begun in 1670, and containing a list of members with their marks,
laws and statutes, and a version of the Old Charges, given in full in an
Appendix, which was published by Hughan and listed by him as No. 22 among extant
copies of the Old Charges.
From the records contained in the old Mark Book one learns
some interesting things. It proves that in the old days Fellowcraft and Master
Mason were one and the same as far as rank is concerned, so that there were only
two grades of membership, Entered Apprentice and Fellow, or Master. The
apprentice took an oath and had the Old Charges read to him, comprising his
initiation ceremony, but there is nothing to show that any ceremony attended his
passing to the higher rank, save that he was usually required to produce a
masterpiece. In 1670, forty-seven years before the founding of the first Grand
Lodge (London), non-operatives outnumbered operatives in the lodge membership
four to ones and contained in their list many notable and some aristocratic
names, including four noblemen, a professor of mathematics, three ministers, two
surgeons, four carpenters and several men of other trades. It will be seen that
the lodge was a real society, not a mere trade union, keeping its feasts on St.
John in December, looking after its poor, and once a month holding its regular
meetings at which time there was much good fellowship but no disorder. Nearly
all the Scotch lodges of the time admitted "speculative" members, many of whom
were very active and held office.. This is one of a thousand similar facts to
prove that our modern Freemasonry was a gradual evolution out of medieval
Operative Masonry. The minutes of Aberdeen Lodge are the oldest known to have
been preserved; for some strange reason no minutes of an English lodge prior to
1717 are in existence.
There has been much speculation, most of it worthless,
about the mysterious "Mason word" often encountered in the records of Scotch
Masonry. Brother Miller, basing his statement on the memorials of his own
ancient lodge, has something interesting to say on the subject:
"The term was common in the Scottish lodges in the early
days, but what the old Scottish Mason Word was remains unknown. The conclusion
has been come to that this formed the only degree in the early Masonry of
Scotland, and consisted in the reading to the candidate for apprenticeship the
legend of the Craft and the communication of the Mason Word. In the Aberdeen
rules reference is also made to 'the oaths we received at our entry to the
benefit of the Mason Word.' So far as is known, there was no ceremony in
connection with advancement to the rank of Fellowcraft, or Master."
A Worshipful Master was chosen each year, but the Warden
held office indefinitely; besides these were a Clerk, an Officer (his functions
are not described): and a Boxmaster.
"The Boxmaster was chosen annually. He was selected 'only
from among the company because the Master keeps one key and the Warden another.'
At that time, accordingly, the Keymasters appear to have been the Master, Warden
and Boxmaster. but in 1696. which is the date of the first minute recording an
election, two Keymasters were appointed, in addition to the ordinary
office-bearers, to act along with the Boxmaster. In the Mason Box were kept the
Mark Book and the money of the lodge. The box had three locks, one of the keys
being in the custody of each Keymaster. Their presence was therefore obligatory
at any meeting at which it was necessary to open the Mason Box; we have seen
from a previously quoted regulation that the clerk was not to write in the Mark
Book unless the three Keymasters were present."
The rules governing dues payable by non-operatives opens a
little window into the life of the lodge. Says one author:
"The following are the provisions for the dues payable by
the non-operative, or, as they are termed in the rules, the gentlemen Masons.
The apprentice contributed four rix dollars of composition, a lion apron and a
pair of good gloves to every person concerned in the lodge, 'or if the entering
Prentice have not whereupon to furnish aprons and gloves, he must pay two rix
dollars for them, which makes up six in all, with one dinner, one speaking pint
and his contribution to the Box, as we have paid before him, with one merk piece
for his Mason mark, one merk piece to our officer for calling a lodge; this is
the least we take for Entered Prentices.' Of the entry money of apprentices,
one-half was paid into the Mason Box, and the other half spent as the will of
the company thought fit. When advanced to Fellowcraft, the new member of the
lodge had to provide a dinner and a pint of wine, or what the will of the
company pleased. There is also provision for making strangers who had been
entered in another lodge, Master Masons of the Lodge of Aberdeen."
One of the most interesting pages in the book, and
recommended as throwing light on certain obscure passages in our present ritual,
is this:
"Probably the most important provision in the Laws and
Statutes, from the Masonic point of view, is in the third rule, which ordains
that 'no lodge be holden within a dwelling house where there is people living in
it but in the open fields, except it be ill weather, and then let there be a
house chosen that no person shall hear nor see us.' Compare with this the words
of the fifth rule: 'We ordain likewise that all entering Prentices be entered in
our ancient outfield lodge in the Mearns in the parish of Nigg at the scounces
at the point of the Ness.' Gould makes the following reference to these entries
in the rules: 'We meet with, in the Laws and Statutes of the Aberdeen Lodge in
1'670, the only allusion - antedating the era of Grand Lodges - to the practice
of lodges being held and apprentices entered in the open fields.' These two
regulations seem to indicate that it had long been the practice of the members
of the lodge to hold their meetings in the open air in some secluded spot which
would ensure privacy for their proceedings; they also seem to infer a greater
regard for secrecy in their initiations than would have been necessary for the
mere reading over of the Mason Charter and the communication of the Mason Word.
They accord with the Masonic tradition that, in the old days, lodges were
enjoined to assemble on the highest hills or in the lowest valleys. According to
a tradition of the lodge, the Masons were accustomed to hold their meetings at
Carden's Haugh, Rubislaw, and in the hollow at Cunningar Hill."
Operative Masons were called "domatic," non-operatives were
known as "gentlemen," or "geomatic." In 1781 the Operatives seceded and formed a
lodge of their own, still existing as Operative Lodge, No. 150. The Grand Lodge
of Scotland was organized in 1736, but it was long in enforcing its authority
over Scotch lodges. Many "irregular" lodges flourished in or about Aberdeen in
1752. The "New Constitutions" enforced by Grand Lodge wrought many changes.
"The constitution of the lodge remained much the same until
1736 when the effect of the foundation of the Grand Lodge of Scotland began to
show itself. In that year the minutes first refer to candidates being entered,
passed and raised, and the members appear then to have given their simple
ceremony of admission and adopted the three degrees of modern Masonry. In 1737 a
Senior and Junior Warden were appointed. In 1739 the Master was first styled
Right Worshipful Master. In 1740 two Deacons, and in 1754 three Stewards were
added. In 1757 a Depute Master was appointed. In 1776 a clergyman was admitted a
member and made Chaplain to the lodge. In respect of his being a clergyman he
was admitted free of all dues, a custom known in other Scottish lodges of the
time. The use of the interesting word Keymaster was maintained until 1756, after
which year no further appointments to that office were made."
One of the most interesting pages in this book is that
which refers to Dr. James Anderson, author, or at least compiler, of the Book of
Constitutions of 1723, almost universally employed as the foundation of Masonic
laws. Dr. Anderson was an alumnus of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and it is
considered most probable that he was a member of the Aberdeen Lodge, though the
minutes of the period are unfortunately lost. Gould was of the opinion that
Anderson very probably introduced into English Masonry some of the terms then
used in Scotch Masonry.
It will be profitable to read in conjunction with Bro.
Miller's substantial little book other writings on the subject, all available:
Notes on the History of Masonry In Aberdeen, A. M. Murero; Merchant and Craft
Guilds (of Aberdeen), E. Bain; Collected Essays and Papers Relating to
Freemasonry, p. 105, R. F. Gould; Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. II, pp. 159,
165. These studies, if read together, will furnish one with a more accurate and
vivid conception of what Masonry was like before 1717 than many long histories.
* * *
A BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE AND WISDOM
THE LODGE AND THE CRAFT, A PRACTICAL EXPI,ANATION OF THE
WORK OF FREEMASONRY, by Rollin C. Blackmer, C. M., M. D., LLD., Past Master,
Past High Priest, Past Commander. Published by The Standard Masonic Publishing
Company, St. Louis, Me. May be purchased through the National Masonic Research
Society, 1950 Railway Exchange, St. Louis, Mo. Black cloth, 297 pages, with
portrait. Price, $3.00 postpaid.
WHEN George Washington was initiated at Fredericksburg,
Va., there stood in the anteroom two demijohns of rum, facetiously called J and
B. The thing was typical of the customs of the day, which was a time of hard
living and much drinking everywhere. The festive board was the center of
attraction in many lodges and the fraternity itself, though there were many good
men and great in its membership, was usually looked upon as a kind of social
order, an institution devoted to good fellowship, rare sport and hilarity.
A change came over the fraternity during the Revolution.
Bro. George Washington himself had much to do with it for he was an active Mason
and through his devotion to the Order led many of the outstanding patriots to
unite with the Craft, so that gradually it increased in responsibility and
dignity until at last, owing to the pressure of the times and the solemn,
serious crises of the war, it was welded and unified into a solid brotherhood
filled with a new national consciousness and a devout sense of the leadership of
God.
This period was followed, as by a kind of reaction, by the
anti-Masonic crusade. The fury and devastation it suffered from its enemies left
the Craft dazed and prostrated, so weakened in influence and decimated in
numbers that Jeremiahs everywhere predicted its speedy extinction. In one way
that terrible grilling wrought good for Freemasonry; it proved how unwise a
thing it is for lodges to meddle in party politics, and how wicked a thing it is
for Masonic leaders to use the name of Masonry to ballast their political kites.
After the bitter lessons learned between 1820 and 1840, he would be a foolish
counsellor indeed who would recommend that Freemasonry employ itself in such
affairs.
Before the fraternity had recovered from this prostration
the Civil War came upon it so that once again it found itself passing through a
furnace of fire. The record of the Craft during that time of fraternal strife is
a glorious one and somebody should embody it in a history, lest the men of
future generations forget how at one time Masonry proved itself strong in the
ordeal of battle.
During the period of slow growth which lasted from about
1870 until 1900 or thereabouts, solemnized by that four-year period which had
cast a dark gloom over the entire country, the Masonic membership was filled
with a serious religious consciousness and a very sensitive fear lest the Order
become too popular or its secrets be made too easy of access.
After the beginning of the present century a new mood came
over the Order coincidentally with the beginning of the era of expansion which
continues even now. Freemasonry has grown to the largest fraternity in the
world, an organization in this land of nearly three million brethren, solidified
by an acute national consciousness, and dedicated to all manner of public
service. Everywhere is activity, growth, enlargement, ramification and an almost
nervous zeal; lodges increase with an amazing rapidity. The Order has grown Wore
complicated and its problems have been multiplied and intensified. The time has
arrived when the individual Mason is so bewildered in trying to find his way
about among the Rites and auxiliary organizations that some kind of guidance for
him in the shape of Masonic literature and education is a necessity, while those
carrying the responsibility of managing such a huge institution would soon find
themselves helpless to handle the situation without the help of Masonic
literature. Books and journals, once looked upon with a certain degree of
suspicion as being in danger of revealing the "secrets" of the Craft, are now
encouraged and sought after as being a practical necessity.
Mr. Blackmer's The Lodge and the Craft is one of a score of
volumes that have come into existence during the past few years as a result of
the evolution above described; it is intended to assist the brethren in their
understanding of their work and of the institutional mechanism through which it
is necessary that Freemasonry carry on its activities. It is a volume in which
masses of solid information are closely crowded together and so organized and
arranged that a newly made brother can follow it through with understanding. It
covers the work of the three degrees, explains the forms of Masonic
organization, deals with the ancient landmarks, symbols and emblems, and in its
last chapters contains some excellently wise advice concerning the management of
the lodge and the practice of Masonic jurisprudence. Brother Blackmer has for
many years been an active worker in several of the Rites, thereby discovering
what it is that Masons most need to know; this experience of practical affairs
has enabled him to make a judicious selection out of a store of knowledge that
is often astonishing in its extent. The book is especially valuable to beginning
students and to Study Clubs. It was originally composed with an eye to the needs
of the Grand Jurisdiction of Missouri, but such local references as it contains
are of so slight a character as not to affect its use by members of the Craft in
all jurisdictions.
----o----
THE QUESTION BOX
THE BUILDER is an open forum for free and fraternal
discussion. Each of its contributors writes over his own name, and is
responsible for his own opinions. Believing that a unity of spirit is better
than a uniformity of opinion, the Research Society, as such, does not champion
any one school of Masonic thought as over against another, but offers to all
alike a medium for fellowship and instruction, leaving each to stand or fall by
its own merits.
The Question Box and Correspondence Column are open to all
members of the Society at all times. Questions of any nature on Masonic subjects
are earnestly invited from our members, particularly those connected with lodges
or study clubs which are following our Study Club course. The Society is now
receiving from fifty to one hundred inquiries each week; it is manifestly
impossible to publish many of them in this Department.
MASONRY'S OLDEST RECORDED DATE
While listening to a Masonic orator who claimed f or our
fraternity a very great antiquity it occurred to me to learn what is the oldest
recorded date actually connected with our institution. Can you tell me, please?
The orator could not but he kindly referred me to you.
Y. W. L., Ohio.
Our oldest Masonic MS., the Regius, is usually dated at
1390 A. D. but it is evident from a study of this aged document that the Craft
was of hoar age even then. There is a yet older memorial in the form of an entry
in the Corporation Records at Guildhall, London, which proves that as early as
1356 rules for the regulation of the Masons of London were passed before the
Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriffs of the city. No other fraternity in existence can
prove by written records such an antiquity.
* * *
LUTHER BURBANK A MASON
I write to inquire if Luther Burbank, the great plant
wizard of California, is a Mason. He is one of my heroes whom I should like to
think of as a brother in our ancient mystical science.
B. W. M., North Carolina.
Bro. Luther Burbank was raised in Santa Rosa Lodge,
California, Aug. 13, 1921. It was a memorable event which the then Grand Master
George F. Rodden, a gracious and eloquent leader who will live long in the
memories of the Craft of California, afterwards described in a paragraph of
beautiful prose: "Because the roster of Masonry is replete with the names of
famous men, it might be assumed, logically, that to add another would occasion
but little comment. Familiarity often engenders indifference. But try as we will
to hold steadfast to the principle of democracy and to the landmark that in
Masonry all men are upon a level plane, we cannot avoid being a bit jubilant and
proud when a man, who, by his virtues and ability, has won for himself universal
respect, admiration and international fame, evidences his faith in us by
desiring affiliation. On Saturday evening, Aug. 13, a great body of Masons (many
coming from distant places) assembled at Santa Rosa, there to witness or
participate in the raising of Luther Burbank. Seer and wizard, with a life of
achievement, foremost of his craft in all the world, he that night gave us a
lesson in those qualities of modesty and humility which distinguish the truly
great, and which should be of much splendid value to all who profit thereby. The
Grand Master was honored with an invitation which he was more than pleased to
accept."
* * *
GRAND LODGE STATISTICS
I understand that Masonic membership in United States now
runs to more than three million. Can you give me the exact figures ?
H.K.P., Idaho.
Your information is somewhat in error, but not far off.
According to a compilation made by Bro. C. C. Hunt on July 1, 1923, our national
membership totals 2,850,910. Arranged alphabetically Grand Lodges run as
follows:
|
1 |
Alabama |
48,126 |
26 |
Nebraska |
38,642 |
|
2 |
Arizona |
5,140 |
27 |
Nevada |
2,521 |
|
3 |
Arkansas |
32,478 |
28 |
New Hampshire |
14,505 |
|
4 |
California |
93,179 |
29 |
New Jersey |
73,854 |
|
5 |
Colorado |
28,027 |
30 |
New Mexico |
5,975 |
|
6 |
Connecticut |
39,689 |
31 |
New York |
286,594 |
|
7 |
Delaware |
5,576 |
32 |
North Carolina |
38,348 |
|
8 |
District of Columbia |
19,986 |
33 |
North Dakota |
14,693 |
|
9 |
Florida |
22,691 |
34 |
Ohio |
172,341 |
|
10 |
Georgia |
66,960 |
35 |
Oklahoma |
59,730 |
|
11 |
Idaho |
8,776 |
36 |
Oregon |
25,328 |
|
12 |
Illinois |
246, 640 |
37 |
Pennsylvania |
186,560 |
|
13 |
Indiana |
117,074 |
38 |
Rhode Island |
16,257 |
|
14 |
Iowa |
81,405 |
39 |
South Carolina |
27,958 |
|
15 |
Kansas |
72,297 |
40 |
South Dakota |
18,345 |
|
16 |
Kentucky |
69,260 |
41 |
Tennessee |
43,283 |
|
17 |
Louisiana |
31,221 |
42 |
Texas |
117,492 |
|
18 |
Maine |
41,730 |
43 |
Utah |
4,329 |
|
19 |
Maryland |
29,632 |
44 |
Vermont |
18,229 |
|
20 |
Massachusetts |
110,018 |
45 |
Virginia |
41,191 |
|
21 |
Michigan |
134,071 |
46 |
Washington |
40,576 |
|
22 |
Minnesota |
53,941 |
47 |
West Virginia |
29.610 |
|
23 |
Mississippi |
31,146 |
48 |
Wisconsin |
49,539 |
|
24 |
Missouri |
104,084 |
49 |
Wyoming |
6,513 |
|
25 |
Montana |
18,670 |
50 |
Philippine Islands |
6,680 |
|
|
|
|
|
Total |
2,850,910 |
With these figures may be compared the findings for foreign
Grand Lodges as prepared by Bro. C. C. Woods, Fraternal Correspondent, Grand
Lodge of Missouri:
|
Name |
Lodges |
Members |
Gain |
|
Alberta |
129 |
11,405 |
920 |
|
British Columbia |
100 |
11,033 |
979 |
|
Canada |
527 |
91,879 |
7,594 |
|
Cuba |
118 |
9,865 |
89 |
|
England |
3,808 |
250,000 |
.... |
|
Ireland |
600 |
28,905 |
.... |
|
Manitoba |
91 |
10,208 |
876 |
|
New Brunswick |
37 |
3,898 |
78 |
|
New South Wales |
318 |
32,259 |
4,276 |
|
New Zealand |
221 |
17,245 |
1,200 |
|
Nova Scotia |
79 |
9,498 |
717 |
|
Panama |
6 |
...... |
.... |
|
Prince Edward Island |
15 |
1,085 |
49 |
|
Quebec |
78 |
12,677 |
620 |
|
Queensland |
73 |
2,600 |
90 |
|
Saskatchewan |
163 |
11,970 |
592 |
|
Scotland |
530 |
200,000 |
.... |
|
South Australia |
83 |
6,540 |
375 |
|
Tasmania |
28 |
2,177 |
108 |
|
Victoria |
258 |
23,237 |
2,935 |
|
Western Australia |
90 |
5,517 |
272 |
|
|
7,368 |
743,029 |
21,770 |
* * *
THE DEMOCRACY OF DEATH
Years ago I read a beautiful piece of eloquence about
death. Some lines keep running through my head, like these:
"Death is a democracy in which all men lie at last on an
equality. There is no rank or honor in the grave." Do you chance to recognize
the lines? If so, who was the author?
S. W. A., North Carolina.
The passage is doubtless J. J. Ingall's apostrophe to the
grave. It is worth printing.
"In the democracy of the dead, all men at last are equal.
There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.
At this fatal threshold the philosopher ceases to be wise, and the song of the
poet is silent. Dives relinquishes his millions, and Lazarus his rags. The poor
man is as rich as the richest and the rich man is as poor as the pauper. The
creditor loses his usury and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation. There
the proud man surrenders his dignities, the politician his honors, the worldling
his pleasures, the invalid needs no physician and the laborer rests from
unrequited toil.
"Here at last is nature's final decree in equity. The
wrongs of time are redressed, injustice is expiated, the irony of fate is
refuted, the unequal distribution of wealth, honor, capacity, pleasure and
opportunity which makes life so cruel and inexplicable ceases in the realm of
death. The mightiest captain succumbs to that invincible adversary, who disarms
alike the victor and vanquished."
* * *
"IF WITHIN THE FIRST SQUARE OR ANGLE OF MY WORK"
Our Study Club committee has been asked the following
question: what is the meaning of "If within the first square or angle of my
work?" We should greatly appreciate any light you may be able to shed upon the
subject.
L. C. H., Arizona.
The expression, "If within the first square or angle of my
work," is found in a certain part of the work of some states. Back in the early
days of the society, a brother from Idaho requested an explanation of this
phrase, I noted as I was reading over some of the old files of THE BUILDER;
apparently, no one could then shed any light on it. I hope he will see this
also.
In the oldest American ritual known to me, which I believe
to date back to 1805 or 1808, I find the following notation which sets forth the
explanation that was offered by whoever inserted the phrase in the ritual:
"At the building of King Solomon's Temple, the Fellowcrafts
had certain angles or squares marked out for them to work in and they were under
no obligation to attend any sign or token given them beyond that angle or
square."
In other words, they were assigned certain sections of the
work and had no responsibilities outside of these sections. You will see that
the phrase corresponds to the other one, "if within the length of my cabletow."
It has that same significance.
I would hesitate to even guess as to how this phrase came
to be included. It might be simply a fanciful invention and then again, the idea
might be found in Josephus or some other early Jewish writer. The most
interesting feature is how this phrase came to be handed down from perhaps 1808
and included in the work in some of the Western States while generally discarded
in the East.
A. L. KRESS.
* * *
SECRECY AS REGARDS LODGE BUSINESS
Is a Mason obligated to keep the business and financial
affairs of his lodge locked up in a faithful breast or is secrecy binding only
on the ritualistic part? Some things have leaked out of our own lodge recently
that have brought the subject to the fore, so that your opinion will be
appreciated.
A. R. W., Ohio.
Your Grand Master for 1921, Bro. John R. Flotron, expressed
an opinion on that subject that is to be recommended to brethren everywhere.
Read and consider it as good gospel. "I find a general laxity throughout this
Grand Jurisdiction in the matter of the business concerns of the lodge. A large
portion of our members do not seem to be aware of the fact that the buisness of
a lodge is just as secret as ritualistic work, especially so with reference to
the ballot, which is one of its most sacred institutions It is not given to all
men to be honored by becoming members, but Masonry does not contemplate placing
upon such men a mark of character in the community in which they live.
----o----
CORRESPONDENCE
MUSICAL SETTING FOR "EVERY YEAR"
In the September BUILDER you refer to the poem "Every Year"
by Albert Pike and how he came to rewrite it.
In this connection it may be interesting to know that there
are those now alive who recite the fact that General Pike visited San Diego some
time after the Civil War. My informant is Arthur M. Ellis, of Los Angeles,
authority on early Masonry in California.
But the fact I desired to call to your attention is that
the organist of the San Diego Lodge of Perfection has and plays the music to
which this poem was set, by Col. E. T. Blackmer, who was the Venerable Master of
this Lodge of Perfection for years and the one mainly responsible for the
vigorous Scottish Rite Consistory now existing in this city.
He was a very dear friend of mine and shortly after he
composed the music to accompany "Every Year" he played it on the piano to me and
sang the song softly over to it.
As it is not generally known that the poem has been set to
music by Col. Blackmer (after whom Blackmer Lodge is named) and the music can
probably be obtained by writing the organist of the Lodge of Perfection I
thought it best to advise you of these facts.
C. F. Willard, San Diego, Calif.
* * *
THE SCOTTISH RITE IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
The writer was born in Bedford, Iowa, and was "raised" in
that town by Taylor Lodge, No. 156, immediately after returning from the
Philippines with his regiment, the 51st Iowa Vol.
I have been active in Masonic work in this territory since
that time, more particularly in Scottish Rite; and for some years have been
compiling data for the archives of our bodies.
The oldest original letter we have is dated Nov. 20, 1873,
from Pitkin C. Wright, of DeWitt, Iowa, addressed to Governor John Owen Dominis
(the Consort of Queen Liliuokalani) in which he writes that "he has been
commissioned by Or. Comd. Albert Pike as General Deputy of the Supreme Council
and to organize, establish and install bodies in the Sandwich Islands." Wright
signs his name as P. Gr. Com. Kt. T. of Iowa.
Further records show that Wright did come to the Islands in
1874 and installed the bodies up to and including the 18th in that year.
We are most fortunate in having twenty-two original letters
from Albert Pike himself addressed to either Governor Dominis or King David
Kalakaua, both of whom were-crowned thirty-thirds for their active work in
Masonry. We have had eleven thirty-thirds in these Islands and our present
membership is now over 700.
Walter R. Coombs, Honolulu.
* * *
MAGNUS JOHNSON NOT A MASON
I have had some inquiry as to whether or not Magnus
Johnson, the newly elected Senator of Minnesota, is a Mason.
In order to assure myself, I talked with him about it and
will say he is not. Nor does he belong to any other fraternal society.
He did at one time bung to The Court of Honor but dropped
it a few years ago.
He is not opposed to secret fraternal orders and in his
talk with me said he knew that they were for and accomplish a great deal of
good.
I write this thinking that you also may have inquiries
regarding him. I have known him for about sixteen years and he lives within the
Jurisdiction of Plumb Line Lodge. A. F. & A.M., No. 173, Kimball, Minn.
A.C. Douglass, Kimball, Minn.
* * *
SECRETARY FOR FIFTY-TWO YEARS
On looking over THE BUILDER for March, 1923, I came across
"Forty-fifth Term as Secretary."
We can beat that record in South Carolina. Bro. Tillman
Faulkner was elected Secretary of Star Lodge, No. 99, of Graniteville, S. C., on
Dec. 3, 1868, and served continuously till his death in 1920. In all that long
period he missed only four communications of his lodge, and those were missed
during the last two or three years of his life through sickness.
On April 10, 1916, Comp. Charles Frank Jackson was called
Home after serving our Grand Royal Arch Chapter as Grand Treasurer for
fifty-eight years. Perhaps the foregoing will interest your readers.
J. L. Michie, South Carolina.
* * *
SCOTTISH RITE FEES IN CHINA
In THE BUILDER last December appeared a letter from Bro.
William Moister in which he relates how certain brothers had to pay in the
neighborhood of $500.00 for the Scottish Rite Degrees taken somewhere in the
East, probably in China. I wonder if it will be too late for me to offer a
suggestion to explain these probably exorbitant prices ? It is possible that the
brethren in question were talking in terms of local money which, in our case, is
the Mexican dollar. The fees here in Shanghai for the Scottish Rite are $340.00
Mexican. If to this was added the cost of a journey from Japan and return it is
probable that it did cost these brethren about $500.00 to get the Rite. If they
had to stay a week here the total cost to them would probably have been not less
than $600.00 Mexican. Bro. Moister does not mention the time when these degrees
were taken. If it was two years ago the Mexican dollar was then worth $1.11 in
United States currency. The brethren therefore were not so far out after all in
what they told Bro. Moister.
E. J. Hudson, District Grand Secretary,
District Grand Lodge of China,
71 Szechneu, Shanghai, China.
----o----
YE EDITOR'S CORNER
It is better to surpass one's self than one's fellows.
* * *
It is said that Roy Chapman Andrews has discovered a nest
of petrified dinosaur eggs somewhere in Mongolia. Amateur symbologists, please
copy. Doesn't this prove that Freemasonry existed among the dinosaurs? Referred
to the shade of Le Plongeon.
* * *
The late Sir John Robertson Ross, historian of the Craft in
Canada, bequeathed his fine Masonic library to the Grand Lodge of Canada. It has
been housed in the Yonge Street Temple, Toronto.
* * *
Bro. Dr. Joseph Fort Newton has recently accepted the post
of Educational Director in the Masonic Service Association; he will have his
office in New York where he is pastor of the Church of the Divine Paternity.
* * *
Let every American, every lover of liberty, every
well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to
violate in the least particular the laws of the country and never to tolerate
their violation by others. As the patriots of Seventy-six did to the support of
the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws
let every American pledge his life, his property and his sacred honor.
Let every man remember that to violate the law is to
trample on the blood of his father and to tear the charter of his own and his
children's liberty. Let reverence for the law be breathed by every American
mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in the
schools, the seminaries and in the colleges, let it be written in primers, in
spelling books and almanacs, let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in
the legislative halls of justice. In short, let it become the political religion
of the nation.
- Abraham Lincoln.
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