The Builder Magazine

January 1925 - Volume XI - Number 1

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Massachusetts Freemasonry in China - BY FREDERICK W. HAMILTON, Grand Secretary, Massachusetts

The Grave of Brother Lafayette - BY BRO. ED TOWSE, HONOLULU, HAWAII

MASONIC RELIEF AT ROCHESTER, MINN.

ONIONS AND SHIBBOLETHS

Man and Men - BY CASSIUS J. KEYSER ADRAIN PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK

High Purpose and Genius of Royal Arch Masonry - By BRO., THE LATE WILLIAM F. KUHN GENERAL GRAND HIGH PRIEST, GENERAL GRAND CHAPTER, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Fellowship of Masonry in Alaska - BY BRO. CHARLES E. NAGHEL SECRETARY, MT. JUNEAU LODGE, No. 147, ALASKA

History of Masonry in China

Shall Grand Lodge Become a Nursing Mother? - BY BRO. DONALD HUGHES, California

STUDIES OF MASONRY IN THE UNTED STATES - BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, EDITOR - PART V. FIRST GRAND LODGES IN PENNSYLVANIA

Great Men Who Were Masons - Dr. James Milnor - By BRO. GEORGE W. BAIRD, P. G. M., District of Columbia

 

EDITORIAL

Eternal Life Now

Mark Twain’s Pessimism

 

THE LIBRARY

An Old Book on Symbolism

Ashmole: Freemason, Occultist, Antiquarian

First Steps in Egyptian

 

What to Read In Masonry – “A Pig in a Poke”

 

THE QUESTION BOX AND CORRESPONDENCE

Wanted: Missing Volumes of “Masonic Review”

Moore’s “Freemasons’ Magazine for Sale

The Indian Brooches

Jonathan Trumbull not a Mason

The Church of England and the Masonic Craft

Was Daniel Boone a Mason?

Information about Webb’s Monitor

“Knights Templar” is correct

Old Book for Sale

Missing since Nov. 10, 1924

 

YE EDITOR’S CORNER

 

----o----

 

Massachusetts Freemasonry in China

 

BY FREDERICK W. HAMILTON, Grand Secretary, Massachusetts

 

THE activities of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in China date back sixty years. The founding of overseas lodges was no new experience for Massachusetts. Henry Price, Provincial Grand Master for North America, established the see of his Provincial Grand Lodge in Boston in 1733, and at the same time warranted The First Lodge in Boston. Only five years later, in 1738, he warranted a lodge in Antigua, B.W.I. From that time on Massachusetts has continually had more or less to do with Masonic work overseas. The oldest of these overseas lodges now in existence and under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts is Bethesda, of Valparaiso, Chile, dating from 1853.

 

Dec. 13, 1863, M.W. Bro. William Parkman, Grand Master, issued a dispensation to Charles E. Hill and sixteen others to form Ancient Landmark Lodge, U.D., in Shanghai. Communication was slower then than now, and the first meeting under the dispensation was not held until May 9, 1864.

 

The letter of W. Bro. Hill making return on the dispensation and asking for a charter contains the following interesting passage with reference to a visit which had been received from R. W. the Hon. William Thomas Mercer, then District Grand Master for China, English Constitution:

 

"Before leaving Shanghai he visited the three lodges under his jurisdiction and called their attention to the proficiency of the American Lodge, recommending the officers and members to often visit us, and ordered [italics in the original] them to adopt our course as to the examination of applicants for advancement."

 

One does not wonder at the enthusiasm of the distinguished visitor. Elsewhere in the same letter W. Bro. Hill says that R. W. Bro. Mercer said that he had heard of the proficiency of the lodge and asked to see a Master Mason Degree. W. Bro. Hill sent out for a candidate who happened to be entitled to the Degree and ordered all the chairs vacated and filled them from the floor. He then had the Degree worked in full and proudly affirms that "the work was done without a single mistake."

 

In its report recommending a charter the committee says:

 

"Your committee feel that the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts can look with pleasure and pride upon this their offspring beyond the seas. This ancient Grand Lodge, true to her traditions, has ever been zealous in disseminating Masonic light to those residing in darkness, and is now performing a duty which it early learned, and has never ceased to practise, of sending to distant lands her messengers of peace. In her humble way she obeys the divine injunction, 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.' "

 

The charter of Ancient Landmark Lodge was issued March 8, 1865.

 

For nearly forty years Ancient Landmark was the one outpost of American Freemasonry in China.

 

In 1903, however, there was a great awakening of interest in American Masonry in China. The acquisition of the Philippine Islands, the declaration of the famous "open door policy" by John Hay, and the general renewal of interest in the Orient on the part of Europe and America caused a rapid increase of American population in China and a desire for American Freemasonry. English Freemasonry was solidly established in China, but the English lodges did not offer precisely what the Americans desired. Naturally, there was a tendency to turn to Massachusetts, as the American Grand Lodge with missionary experience and with an existing establishment in China.

 

In 1903 four dispensations were issued for lodges in China. These were Pei-He, in Tientsin; and Orient, Cathay, and Shanghai in Shanghai.

 

Pei-He had a brief and stormy existence. It started off well and a charter was voted it in 1904. When the time for constitution arrived, however, the hand of misfortune was heavy upon it. The Senior Warden had been called to a distant part of the country by business. The Junior Warden had been murdered by two natives. The Treasurer had died. The Secretary had been transferred to the Philippines. The Master proved himself entirely unfit for his position and incapable of dealing with the difficulties which faced him. The lodge struggled along for a couple of years and finally surrendered its charter in 1906.

 

Orient never got to the point of receiving a charter. Cathay was chartered as Sinim, the original name being considered too near to Far Cathay, of Hankow, No. 2855, on the English roster. Shanghai also received its charter in due time and these two lodges are now in active, flourishing existence.

 

No further changes in the situation in China occurred until 1915. In that year the overseas establishments of Massachusetts were organized into the District Grand Lodges of the Canal Zone, Chile and China, and District Grand Masters were appointed to govern them.

 

INTERNATIONAL LODGE WAS FORMED

 

Shortly after this a petition was received from thirteen Master Masons resident in Peking asking to be formed into a lodge to be known as International Lodge. Three of the petitioners were Chinese brethren who had received their degrees in Washington, D. C. It was clearly stated that the desire of the petitioners was to found a lodge in which East and West might meet on the common ground of Masonry. The petitioners believed that there were elements in Chinese society ready for Masonry, sympathetic with its fundamental ideas, and capable of assimilating and practicing them. It was believed that among these elements Masonry had a great field of most wonderful opportunity, and that nothing could do more to bring the Chinese and Americans into sympathetic understanding than such points of contact between the best in both races as could be furnished by Masonic lodges.

 

The presentation of this petition was an epoch in our Massachusetts Masonry. It raised questions upon whose settlement depended the future of our Masonry in China and, by reaction, the future attitude of our Masonry at home.

 

There are many religions in China. Should the new lodge be founded and opened to Chinese candidates, what should be our attitude toward those religions ? Should we continue to assume (there had never been any legislation on the subject) that the Volume of the Sacred Law meant only the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, or at least the Old, or should the phrase take on a wider meaning ? Could Massachusetts, without for one moment considering the abandonment of the first great Landmark--belief in the Supreme Architect of the Universe--show hospitality to many divergent forms of acceptance of that Landmark ?

 

There was also the question of race to be considered. Was Massachusetts Masonry in China to continue, as it has been for fifty years, to be the fraternal home of Americans and Britishers only, or should it become cosmopolitan and universal?

 

The original American Masons in China were business sojourners and seafaring men. The American lodges, all located in Shanghai, had grown up under the shadow of the old English lodges and were much influenced by them. England had a strong establishment and a District Grand Lodge. English influence predominated generally in the foreign portion of Shanghai. The English and the Chinese did not and do not meet socially. Chinese were not admitted to the English lodges nor had they been to the American lodges. Were the American lodges to continue this policy, or were they to move out from the sphere of dominating English influence and give American Masonry in China a character of its own?

 

It came to this: Was Freemasonry in China to mean anything to the Chinese?

 

REPORT MADE TO GRAND LODGE

 

It is only necessary to say that Bro. Melvin M. Johnson was then Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts to make it clear that the problem received the careful consideration of one of the finest Masonic minds in the United States. The Grand Master called upon the advice of the strongest committee he could raise in the Grand Lodge. The report of the committee was drawn by Bro. Roscoe Pound. [Published in THE BUILDER, October, 1916, page 302.]

 

As a result of these deliberations International Lodge received its dispensation and, in due time, its charter.

 

From that time Massachusetts Masonry in China has had a distinct individuality of its own and has meant something to the Chinese. Be it understood, there has been no breach and no antagonism with English Masonry. Not the slightest cloud dims the cordiality of our fraternal relations. Possibly some of the more conservative of our English brethren may in their hearts question the wisdom of our new policy, so different from their established ways of thinking, but they recognize its Masonic regularity, they acknowledge our unquestionable right to adopt it, and they continue to be our very dear brethren.

 

The essentials of our policy in China are these. Of course no attempt will ever be made to coerce the older lodges, or any lodges, to accept unwelcome applications. As a matter of fact, four of our lodges in China, the three Shanghai lodges and Talien Lodge, of Dairen, Manchuria, have no Chinese members. Three-- International, of Peking, Hykes Memorial, of Tientsin, and Chin Ling, of Nanking--have Chinese members. New lodges are contemplated at other strategic points, and it will be understood that Massachusetts lodges in China are to be chartered with the understanding that they are not to be closed to Chinese who possess proper personal qualifications. There is no thought of establishing lodges made up wholly or even predominantly of Chinese, at least for many years to come. There is no thought of abandoning the English language, even for a single lodge, or of modifying the Massachusetts Ritual. Our Chinese brethren have no desire for any of these things. Every applicant must profess his belief in a Supreme Being, but he may be obligated upon the sacred writings of his own religion. We hold that this meets the requirements regarding the Volume of the Sacred Law.

 

Ten years' experience in International Lodge, fortified by the shorter experience of Hykes Memorial and Chin Ling, strengthen our conviction of the wisdom of our policy. Our Chinese brethren are Masons of the highest type, both in and out of the lodge. Their Ritual is correct and impressive. International has had two Chinese Masters, Wor. Paonan Meinsang Whang, elected in 1917, and Wor. Ssu Pang Chen, now presiding. [See note.] Our Chinese brethren take their Masonry very seriously. They try fully as hard as any of us to practice it in their daily lives. They are most scrupulous in their investigations of Chinese applicants. In several cases Chinese of great wealth and even international reputation have had their applications declined because the Chinese members have said to the Master, "We could not call him brother."

 

Chinese gentlemen of the highest standing have sought admittance. A Prime Minister and a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court have taken their degrees. A President is understood to have withheld his application only because of his very slight knowledge of English. He granted an audience to Grand Master Prince when he visited our lodges in China in 1922, received him most graciously, and expressed his high appreciation of Masonry and his sense of its great value to the people. Three members of International Lodge were among the Chinese delegation at the making of the treaty of Versailles.

 

Such, in brief, is the story of Massachusetts Freemasonry in China. We do not regret the time, effort and money our Grand Lodge is putting into it, for we believe that it has a great mission and a great future .

 

[Note by Editor: For item concerning a Chinese W. M. in Hawaii see 

 

----o----

 

The Grave of Brother Lafayette

 

BY BRO. ED TOWSE, HONOLULU, HAWAII

 

IT was one of the dozens of Sunday mornings that the sharp bow, high white sides and revised masts of the U.S.F.S. Philadelphia rested big and bright from the wharves of Honolulu. The handsome unit of "white squadron" architecture was a striking picture from Punchbowl, from Roundtop, Tantalus or Konahuanui, or from beneath the palms at Waikiki beach. Capt. Henry Cochrane, U.S.M.C. (later major with a Spanish War record), had seated himself with his guests in the shade of the shelter of one of the heavy pieces of the port battery. It was near the gangway. Out on the other side we looked upon the odd little lighthouse, with the reef and surf and sea beyond. Along the opposite bend of the bay were the homes of the local boat clubs--Myrtles, Healanis, Leilanis, Alohas. The young men were getting out shells and barges or were lounging or swimming. From a small wharf native men and women with shouts and laughter were making running jumps into the bay.

 

Solely for the purpose of drawing out the veteran officer, one of his party had remarked that for even, full grace and genuine general charm the Hawaiian half-caste woman was the superior of the daintiest thoroughbred of any kind or clime.

 

Just then a sergeant of marines, a fine, soldiery fellow, approached to make a report to his commander. As the man left the captain began:

 

"That fellow is the complete ideal of a living Bertie Cecil. stepped from Ouida's Under Two Flags. He's a marine and was with me in Paris."

 

Capt. Cochrane had a detail of thirty-two United States marines at the Eiffel Tower Exposition.

 

I asked the captain what sort of a showing they made with samples of the other armies and navies. The captain now became unreserved, fluent and earnest; here is what he said, and how:

 

"They were the best looking, best drilled, best dressed, best behaved, best paid, best fed and most intelligent lot of enlisted men there. Their allowance made them princes among their associates and I was proud of them and our country and its soldiery. Every wealthy American who saw them made them a present. They were in clover all the time and had furloughs and half a dozen honorable mentions in orders when they came home. I have a picture of the company taken at the grave of Lafayette.

 

"It is certainly pardonable that I plume myself upon having instituted the custom of decorating the grave of Lafayette on the Fourth of July.

 

 "Some sort of a patriotic inspiration suggested the plan to me. This was in the month of April. I, of course, thought of May 30 as the appropriate day for the ceremony. Mr. Whitelaw Reid, then our envoy to France, was at once enthusiastic. He said he knew a Lafayette, a bachelor member of the deputies. or some other legislative body.

 

"Mr. Reid, certain that his acquaintance was a relative of the man who made France and America such great friends, at once dictated a letter to him, setting forth fully the plan and indicating a day and hour at which both of us would call.

 

"When we made the visit we were kept waiting perhaps an hour, when one of the most delightful of old gentlemen came in and offered in excellent English the excuse of detention on public business. Very pleasantly did he entertain us. He was the only living male descendent of the companion of Washington.

 

"His widowed sister and her daughter were mentioned with the assurance that they would co-operate in the proposed exercises. M. Lafayette, on condition that we should assume entire control and direction and the management of all details. consented to make an address in English.

 

"Mr. Reid was quite busy at this time and assigned me to the executive work, which included enlistment of a committee of prominent Americans. This was no trouble at all. Then. about May 5, I set out to have a look at the grave of Lafayette and mark a line of march and parade position.

 

"It was a most astonishing thing, but an actual fact, that no one seemed to know where the remains of this noble and famous man had been placed. I hunted for days, being aided by volunteers and paid men. Mr. Reid communicated officially with the Government and we learned that his inquiry was being referred from one bureau to another.

 

"Near the end of May all of us were well nigh hopeless. Then one day I ran across a young American resident who was married to a French woman. He was from Philadelphia, but was at home enough in Paris and with the language to be a very successful professional guide. Well, he knew where Lafayette's grave was.

 

"He was a Freemason, was intimately acquainted with the circumstances of the visits of Lafayette to his own lodge and that of Washington at Alexandria, Va. This guide told me that I might have made the quest simplicity itself by consulting members of the Supreme Council of Thirty-third Degree Scottish Rite Masons of France or any brother of a subordinate body of that great organization. He began to describe the location of the grave, but I took him right along with me.

 

"The tomb, very simply inscribed, was in a small cemetery in one of the most interesting sections or districts of old Paris. Near it was a large cemetery where there had been interred 1,300 victims of the Reign of Terror. This was told in a few lines on a weather-beaten sign over the broken gate. Overlooking both of these burial grounds was a convent made famous in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. One could study French history and literature in that vicinity for a month.

 

"May 30 was now an impossible date for the ceremony and we fixed upon July 4. There was quite a gathering, though there was no intent to make it a general affair. We raised the Stars and Stripes and fired a salute. Then my men stacked arms and fell out. The color sergeant laid his flag on top of the rifles. The sister and niece of M. Lafayette, who were dressed in black, walked over to the line of arms, gently lifted a fold of Old Glory and kissed it reverently. That was a sweet and simple tribute to the United States and all were affected.

 

"The floral offerings included some that I knew to be Masonic and of the Scottish Rite. There was a beautiful cross of red roses, a triangle with a Hebrew character in the center and an elaborate piece with a monogram displaying the letters 'L.F.E.' These, I was told, were for the initials of the words 'Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.' They surmounted the figures 33. Each Freemason present joined in a procession around the grave and at the final encircling of it dropped a sprig of green at the head.

 

"M. Lafayette's speech was a success beyond our most sanguine hopes excepting, perhaps, the very last sentence.

 

"He spoke of our country and his own, of our immortal forefather and of his own great ancestor, of our President and his President, of Mr. Reid and myself and of the occasion.

 

"Then came his peroration and his accident from lack of practice with English. As nearly as I can recall, he said:

 

"'It is peculiarly fitting that this recognition of the distinguished son of such a thriving, busy Republic as France has become, should be at the hands of citizens of that great model and time-tried Republic, that country of brave and brilliant and generous men, that country of such grand institutions and complete liberty, that country which leads the entire world in the march of scientific, mechanical and intellectual-mte-lectual-ah-ah go head.'

 

"Of course 'achievement' was the word he was after. The Americans repressed their laughter and were ready with compliments to the speaker. A few evenings later most of us met him at dinner and he then told the joke on himself. The custom of remembering Lafayette's grave continues and I hope it endure."

 

Afterwards Capt. Cochrane told of witnessing a Russian coronation and his recital of seeing two men guillotined in Paris gave at least one of his hearers more thrills than several legal hangings and a halfdozen lynchings witnessed in the Rocky Mountain country.

 

----o----

 

MASONIC RELIEF AT ROCHESTER, MINN.

 

OWING to the fame of its physicians and hospitals this city has become a mecca for thousands of sick men and women from all parts of the world. Of late years the Grand Lodge of Minnesota has been carrying on among these unfortunates a magnificent relief work, the nature and extent of which is amply set forth in the report of the committee made to Grand Lodge at St. Paul at the Seventy‑first Annual Communication, here republished by consent of Grand Secretary John Fishel:

 

To the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Minnesota:

 

Pursuant to the resolution of one year ago, whereby the Grand Lodge of Minnesota took over the matter of Fraternal Service at Rochester, Minn., the M. W. Grand Master appointed the following trustees to take charge of the work: W. N. Kendrick, P. G. M., Herman Held, P. G. M., and W. Bro. Guy Streator. S. G. S. The appropriation committee placed $3,000 in the hands of the committee to cover the expense.

 

Your committee retained the service of Bro. Frank G. Warner as fraternal representative at a salary of $2,500 per year, placing in his hands five hundred dollars to be used as a revolving fund for the financial assistance of brethren who might be temporarily in need of money.

 

From a small beginning a few years ago when the Master and brethren of Rochester Lodge, No. 21, carried on a splendid work as well as the limited means at their command would admit, this work has developed to such lengths that this year Bro. Warner has met and administered to the comfort of 1956 brethren and members of the O. E. S., making 5,471 calls during the year, besides doing a tremendous number of errands of various kinds and having an average of 163 persons on his list daily. Bro. Warner is present at this session of the Grand Lodge and will supplement this report with a statistical report of his work and a further explanation of what his work consists.

 

In addition to the routine work required of your representative his presence in Rochester has been the means of saving thousands of dollars to the brethren coming there; the majority never having been in Rochester before, come there with a definite amount of money which they feel will cover their traveling expenses, examination at Clinic, operation, if necessary, and their hospital bills, not realizing that often their examination may take from a few days to two or three weeks. Being strangers, sick and often discouraged, and not knowing where to get accommodations within their means, they naturally drift to the easiest place, which is often an expensive hotel, so that by the time they are ready to go to the hospital their funds are seriously depleted. By getting in touch with these brethren upon their arrival your representative is enabled to furnish them with accommodations within their means and often to expedite their examination by seeing that they do not miss their regular appointments.

 

Hitherto, Bro. Warner has received his list of brethren at the separate hospitals, but now, through the generous efforts and co‑operation of Bro. Harry Harwick, financial manager of the Clinic, Bro. Dr. A. W. Adson, who has on former occasions represented the Clinic in our negotiations, and the Rev. Bunge their social service representative, all people are registered as to their fraternal affiliations at the Clinic and he receives his list there. He is thereby enabled to get in immediate touch with the brethren and members of the O. E. S., and the value of his services is greatly enhanced. To these men the Grand Lodge of Minnesota owes a debt of gratitude.

 

The wisdom of providing the revolving fund of $500 has been thoroughly demonstrated by the feet that Bro. Warner has turned this fund over four times, or in other words has loaned $2,000 and the fund is now intact with the exception of a recent loan of $50. In every instance these loans have been promptly returned with expressions of gratitude and appreciation which amply repay the Grand Lodge for any expense which it may have been to and the committee feel that their time has been well spent.

 

Your committee feels that the fund has been rather economcally administered in that the expense outside the salary and Wee expense of your representative has been less than $40, which covers the traveling expense of the members of the committee, telephones and correspondence.

 

----o----

 

ONIONS AND SHIBBOLETHS

 

In commenting upon the use of picturesque phrases recently, The London Times asked: How many of those who talk glibly of shibboleths have before them the picture of the wretched Ephraimites at the ford striving frantically to frame the word which is going to be the arbiter for them of life and death? Rev. Walter Crick, of Oving Vicarage, in answer, mentions a striking repetition, not of the word, but of the facts which the word connotes, as related to him by Major‑General Sir George MacMunn, who served at the Dardanelles and in Mesopotamia during the war:

 

After Lord Allenby's final routing of the Turkish forces broken parties of fugitives arrived at the fords of Jordan. There were many Arabs and Syrians conscripted in the Turkish Army. The fords were held by our Arab allies, and when Turkish soldiers tried to pass they one and all said they were Syrians. So the Arab guards said, "Say now 'Bowel' " (onion), and they said, "Bossel," for no Turk could pronounce it right.

 

History is said to repeat itself, adds Mr. Crick, and, if this is so, no more singular illustration of the feet could well be imagined than is presented by this picture of the Turkish soldiers "striving frantically to frame the word which is going to be the arbiter for them of life and death," just as did the Ephraimites 3,000 years ago, and probably at the self‑same ford! – Toronto Globe.

 

----o----

 

Man and Men

 

BY CASSIUS J. KEYSER ADRAIN PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK

 

DR. KEYSER is known to the country by virtue of a list of notable books, among which is "Mathematical Philosophy," a glorious triumph of right reason in a difficult field, reviewed in these pages, October, 1922, page 319. Count Korzybski's book, to which Dr. Keyser refers below, was reviewed in August of the same year, page 256. The reader will find it worth while to read "Man and Men" along with Bro. Sidney Morse's captivating apologue, "The Grand Vizier's Quest," in The Builder, November last, page 330; the general theme is identical. The present essay is based on an address delivered before the Bureau of Personnel Administration of New York in January, 1924.

 

I CHOSE this subject--"Man and Men"--because I desired to discuss with you the most important subject that I or you or anyone else could think of. In our world there are many realities but they differ much in dignity or rank. Of all the realities with which you and I have to deal, with which it is our privilege and obligation to deal, the supreme one is not matter nor material energy nor space nor time, though the importance of these is very great. The supreme reality is Man. The supreme concrete realities of our world are human individuals--men, women, children. The supreme abstract reality of the world is man--the human race--Humanity. What do I mean by that term ? I mean, I suppose, what you mean. By Humanity I mean all mankind--not merely the living--but the living, the dead, and the unborn. By Humanity I mean, if I may answer abstractly, those propensities and powers in virtue of which humans are human. Have you ever considered what those propensities and powers are? I shall not tarry here, for it would detain us too long, to name them and analyze them. Being human, you have them in some measure. As intelligent humans, interested to understand your own nature, you are bound to ascertain what they are, if you can. And you can, if you will. There is a book that will greatly help you in the quest. I mean Count Korzybski's Manhood of Humanity. It is a work that you and every other man and woman ought to read open mindedly, re-read, and ponder. With its central idea I have dealt briefly in a chapter of my Mathematical Philosophy, but the reading of that chapter, though it may help, is far from sufficient.

 

In the remaining minutes of the hour I wish to say a few things, by way of opening up an immense subject, about the relations of individual human beings to Humanity. I can hardly do more than drive into the wall, rather rudely, a few wooden pegs to which you may desire to attach some reading and reflection in the future.

 

The diagram given herewith will help us. The mid-part represents the Present, occupied by the existing people of the world. On the left is our human Past, tenanted by the dead, a long backward stretch, perhaps a half million years. On the right is the wide strange Future, mysterious realm of the unborn. Humanity embraces the three--the Past, the Present, the Future the dead, the living, the unborn. Today you and I are among the living. Yesterday we were unborn. Tomorrow our bodies will have perished. In each estate we are members of Humanity--representatives, as W. K. Clifford might have said, of "Father Man."

 

We are here tonight because it is the fortune of the living to have to deal with what we are wont to call "the problems of the world." Of these the so-called industrial problems, in which you are especially interested, are only some of the elements or aspects. All the problems are primarily and essentially human problems, problems about humans for humans to solve, and no such problem exists alone or admits of a lone solution. Each of them is in a network involving all the others. In this matter the mystic's contention is true--each is all and all is each.

 

AS MAGGOTS IN A CHEESE

 

I have no single formula for the solution of all your industrial problems, much less have I one for solving all the great problems of our troubled modern world. But it is my conviction that the chief source of trouble is this: We have been and are living in the midst of a great civilization like maggots in a cheese.

 

That is not a conclusion arrived at in haste. It is very deliberate. Perhaps you will consider it carefully.

 

We are living immersed in a civilization which, despite all its short-comings, is so vast and rich and manifold that we cannot measure its proportions nor assess its worth. The industrial and other social troubles of the world will be found, if we view them fundamentally, to have their roots in the fact that we have been living, and are still living, in and upon that civilization, without serious thought of our relations to it, without a sense of our indebtedness and obligations, like maggots in a cheese.

 

And so the best formula I can think of for dealing with industrial and the other human problems of the world is this: Stop living in the midst of our great modern civilization as maggots in a cheese.

 

How is that to be done? The first means thereto is to study civilization--its origin, its genesis, its essential nature, our human relations obligations.

 

Where did our civilization come from?

 

Let me intimate the answer by means of an example.

 

Some months ago I was teaching a class in the calculus. The boys were dealing with problems in maxima and minima. Some of you know, and others do not know, what that means, but all of you will understand what I am about to say. We had one hour. The boys finished in forty-five minutes. "Boys," I said, "please be seated. I want to say something more important than the calculus.

 

"You and I are probably quite ordinary people. It may be that some one among you is extraordinary but, if so, the happy fact is not yet manifest. So let us assume that our native gifts are ordinary. Yet you have just now readily solved problems of a kind that the greatest genius that ever lived on our planet could not solve without the instrument you have employed--an instrument you have been getting acquainted with during the last few weeks, namely, the calculus. Where did it come from?"

 

"It was invented by Newton," said one of the boys. Another one said: "It was invented by Leibniz."

 

I said: "Boys, both of those answers are commonly given and in a sense they are correct. But in a deeper sense both of them are false because Newton and Leibniz did but improve the mathematics of their immediate predecessors, and these did but improve the mathematics of their predecessors, and so on back till you come down here somewhere in the sharp angle of our diagram where our dear remote ancestors are engaged in the struggle of learning to count: the calculus was invented back there ages ago--I mean it started there. And so calculus was not created by Newton or Leibniz. It was produced, little by little, by many generations now in the state of those we are accustomed to call the dead."

 

And I said: "Boys, they are not dead--that-must be evident to you. Their bodies are dead but the men are living and are here in this room--Newton and Leibniz and the rest are here-- they are at work, working with us and through us as agents of Humanity, by means of ideas which they invented, which we inherited and which it is our privilege as humans, and our obligations, to use, to improve, and to transmit. I say 'transmit', for the unborn are coming--if you will go to your cloister and there meditate in the silence, you can see them approach generation after generation of them, fellow children with us of 'Father Man'--they look to you and me and appeal to us as the present occupants and guardians of their future home, fol the kind of world they will find depends upon our loyalty as representatives of Humanity."

 

THE PRINCIPLE IS UNIVERSALLY TRUE

 

I have used the calculus, my friends, merely as an illustration. The calculus is but one element of our civilization. What I have said of the calculus is true of all the other elements--speech, the arts, the sciences, the inventions, the great literatures of East and West, the wisdoms of philosophy and law, the ways of social organization and order, and all the other kinds and forms of material and spiritual wealth. We, the people of this generation, were born in the midst of an immense civilization. We may have improved it a little in some respects but we did not create it. It is of the utmost importance for us to grasp that fact and hold it fast and realize it keenly; for else we shall be as maggots in a cheese. Our civilization--the material and spiritual wealth of the world--was not produced by us. We have it as a gift. It is the fruit of the time and thought and toil of many generations of those whose bodies have indeed perished but whose spirits survive and are now active in the ideas and ideals and sentiments and aspirations embodied and transmitted to us in the form of instrumentalities and institutions, knowledges and arts.

 

We must understand and not forget that there was a time when there were no human beings on this globe. There was a time when humans began to be. We must try to realize, for it is true, that our remotest human ancestors did not know what they were nor where they were. They had no clothes nor houses--they were probably covered with hair and dwelt in caves. They had no language, no human history, not even human tradition, no knowledge of number, no guiding maxims, no tools nor craftmanship. But they had a marvelous thing--a gift that enabled them and impelled to start what we call civilization; and they were, moreover, the first of a race that had another equally marvelous and equally precious gift--a gift enabling them and impelling them to advance civilization. These are the gifts that make humans human.

 

CIVILIZATION IS THE CREATURE OF MAN

 

And so we see that civilization is the creature, not of men, but of Man. It is the product of Humanity. It is to the time and thought and toil of those remote rude ancestors, groping in the dark, and of the many generations of their descendants that you and I and our living fellows are indebted for the immeasurable riches--the material and spiritual wealth--of our present world.

 

To receive that Human Inheritance as we habitually do receive it, taking it all for granted as we take the gifts of Physical Nature-- land and light and sea and sky; not to realize in thought and in feeling that, though we are individuals, we are living organs of Humanity; not to realize in our heads and hearts and ways of living, and not to teach in home and school, our relations and obligations to the Dead and the Unborn: that is what I mean by "living in and upon our civilization like maggots in a cheese."

 

But in proportion as we learn to understand and to feel those relations and obligations, we shall emancipate ourselves from the lower ideals dominant in the world and come under the sway of the higher ones. For, as Benjamin Kidd has justly insisted, there is a hierarchy of ideals and a hierarchy of emotions begotten of them. From the power of the emotion of the ideal of self-efficiency-- causing us to live and kill and die for self; from the power of the emotion of the tribal ideal--causing us to live and kill and die for tribe; from the power of the emotion of the state ideal -- causing us to live and kill and die for state: from the domination of these we shall emancipate ourselves and more and more come under the sway of the highest of all possible ideals, the ideal of Man-- causing us to live and, without killing, to die for Humanity.

 

----o----

 

 The Masonic Teaching

 

"Masonry teaches man to practice charity and benevolence, to protect chastity, to respect the ties of blood and friendship, to adopt the principles and revere the ordinances of religion, to assist the feeble, guide the blind, raise up the downtrodden, shelter the orphan, guard the altar, support the Government, inculcate morality, promote learning, love man, fear God, implore His mercy and hope for happiness."

 

----o----

 

High Purpose and Genius of Royal Arch Masonry

 

By BRO., THE LATE WILLIAM F. KUHN GENERAL GRAND HIGH PRIEST, GENERAL GRAND CHAPTER, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 

DURING his term as General Grand High Priest Bro. Kuhn visited as many Grand Chapters as he could find opportunity to do, and at the same time accepted invitations to speak before other Grand Bodies. Such brethren as have been able to read the Proceedings of these various Grand Bodies must have been impressed with the vitality and resourcefulness of the speaker's mind, for while his theme was everywhere very much the same he managed to give it on each occasion a form and application appropriate to the occasion. One of the best reported of his addresses as Grand High Priest will be found in the Proceedings of the Seventy-sixth Annual Convocation of the Grand Chapter of Mississippi, held at Vicksburg, Feb. 21, 1924, here reproduced.

 

AS General Grand High Priest, I am endeavoring to visit as many Grand Chapters as possible during my term of office, and I have but one theme: more dignified and impressive ritualism and a moral and educational value of the Capitular degrees. It is a lamentable fact that Royal Arch Masonry has not come into its own. Many Freemasons are proud of the fact that they are Master Masons, or Knights Templar, or Scottish Rite Masons, but seldom do they boast of being Royal Arch Masons. There must be a reason for this, and it lies in the fact that Capitular degrees have been conferred in an undignified manner, and the moral, historical and educational value have been entirely neglected. But a change is coming, and these degrees are receiving more attention and a more dignified rendition than ever before. It has been established beyond a doubt that even the most light-headed of men prefer dignified work and an occasional glimpse of the moral and intellectual values contained therein.

 

Royal Arch Masonry will come to its own as soon as these facts are recognized. Freemasonry is a beautiful allegory which unfolds to the thinking Freemason the interesting story of the Loss, the Recovery and the practical application of that which we call the Word. This is all that the great text book, Freemasonry, contains. The Loss is symbolized in the lodge, and the Recovery, with its practical application to life, is symbolized in Royal Arch Masonry. Freemasonry has a golden thread, a central idea running through all of the degrees and around which all the symbolism of Freemasonry revolves. This central idea, or the goal of Freemasonry, upholds the entire fabric, and unless this is kept in mind, the whole structure falls to the ground. This center is the Master's Word.

 

Freemasonry is not a lot of degrees piled one upon another without any connecting link, or a heterogeneous mass gathered together with the mere idea of fooling the candidate into taking many degrees. But there is this goal running through Ancient Craft Masonry of which the Capitular degrees are an important part thereof. The non-recognition of this fact has prevented Royal Arch Masonry from coming into its own. It has been misunderstood, misinterpreted and made a jest, instead of recognizing the greatest field for intellectual and moral development of anything in Freemasonry. This co-relation of the degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry was recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England when it stated that "Ancient Craft Masonry consists of the degrees of Entered Apprentice Fellow Craft, Master Mason, together with the Holy Royal Arch," and in section second, it declared "that the lodges may confer the Orders of Chivalry under their several constitutions."

 

IT IS A PART OF ANCIENT CRAFT MASONRY

 

This means that the Royal Arch Degree is a part of Ancient Craft Masonry, and the Orders of Chivalry were recognized as Masonic. This constitutes York Rite Freemasonry. It naturally follows that one degree is not higher than another, but is a part of the unfolding of an interesting story, and the Royal Arch is as much a part of Ancient Craft Masonry as the Master's Degree, and it may be truthfully stated that no one is in possession of all of Ancient Craft Masonry without the Royal Arch. In this interesting relation and co-relation we have the beautiful symbolism of the Loss, the Recovery and the interpretation of the Master's Word. If there is a Loss there must be a Recovery, and the Recovery is of little value unless you interpret the Recovery. It would be merely theoretical, philosophical nonsense to discover the Master's Word, and fail to interpret it in a practical application to our duties as Freemasons.

 

The Royal Arch portrays this Recovery. That is, if you receive the degree in a manner that will enable you to recognize that you have made the Discovery. Unfortunately, many who have received the Royal Arch Degree did not receive anything and the whole thing was merely a joke. Many newly-made Master Masons have been disappointed in not receiving that which was promised them, and in the fact that they were put off with a substitute, although they received the promise that at the proper time the true Word should be discovered....

 

Originally, the Word may have been given in the Master's Degree, but the introduction of the legend of Hiram Abiff necessarily made a fourth degree possible. Not only made it possible but absolutely necessary to symbolize the Recovery. This is the story of Freemasonry. The candidate feels a disappointment in not receiving the Master's Word as had been promised him, but he fails to grasp the truth behind this denial, this disappointment, but when he analyzes the question from every angle and side he will invariably come to the conclusion that he w as unprepared and unqualified to receive it. Men are not qualified to receive great truths instantly. It has been stated that a great truth requires three hundred years before it is accepted. The philosophy and history of religion bear out this idea. It is a lamentable fact that great truths, throughout the ages, have found unqualified ears. This is true of ancient Babylon, of Persia and Egypt. It is true of the Hebrew nation. All have been searching for truth. They have been reaching out. They have been grasping for it. All the prophets of the Hebrew people, from Moses to Malachi, and even including many great men of modern times, have spoken words and taught truths that fell upon unqualified listeners and deaf ears. It is the old, old history, of rejection, because not understood. It requires years of discipline, research and intellectual toil before arriving at the stage of being qualified to comprehend great truths in their completeness. The Master Mason did not receive that which was promised him, because he was not qualified in those things that "Mark the perfect man."

 

We are searching for the truth, the Master's Word, and this search is evolutionary, constantly rising to a higher and better conception. This is well illustrated in the conception of Jehovah from that of Abraham down to the time of Christ. Every prophet took an advanced step in his conception of Deity and the Tribal God of Moses became the Father Omnipotent and loving to all who worshipped Him.

 

FREEMASONRY IS A GREAT SCHOOL

 

Freemasonry is a great school in which every Freemason, if he desires, may educate himself. He will not only be a historian, but a Bible student. If he is a reader he will find the footprints of Freemasonry in all history, in the arts and sciences.

 

The chapter degrees illustrate symbolically and teach four important and necessary lessons, which he who seeks that which was lost who would make the recovery, must have in his heart and soul. Without the possession of these attributes no recovery will ever be made and that which was lost will forever remain in darkness.

 

Every Freemason is symbolically a workman, whether his place is in the quarries or shop. Every day finds him standing before the Overseers to test the work wrought by him, according to the design laid down in the "Great Trestle Board." These designs require good work, and square work, because only good work and square work can be used in the building of the temple. A square man, and a square man only; a man who stands foursquare to the world, not a trickster, a politician, a doughface, or a weathervane, is demanded. A man who can face the world unshaken, unashamed, a bold uncompromising man for all things right, is needed everywhere. In the great search for that which was lost, such a man has taken a long step on his journey.

 

One of the great essentials today is to have an open mind. You and I are too bigoted in many things. We have our set ways, our set way of thinking. You remember that when a beautiful stone was presented, it was rejected because it did not fit the square of the Overseer, and they heaved it over among the rubbish. The trouble has been in the past, and is today, a great hindrance to progression, that we are all carrying about little dinky squares and every time anything new comes up we put our squares to it, our notion of the thing, not our reason, but chiefly a notion and conception, and if it does not fit the little squares of ours, we heave it among the rubbish. We do not stop to analyze the question. We have a preconceived notion, not an idea, hence we throw the new thing overboard. This is true in politics; it is true in religion, it is true in science. In fact it is true in everything that is new. This is the story of the Master's Word. Everything new that comes we meet it in a defensive manner. We do not canvass it and examine it, but without thinking about it, reject it. We are not open minded.

 

I do not believe that any man can discover the Master's Word who is a bigot, who is not willing to weigh things. We know what bigotry has done in this world; that it has kept churches apart and has made partisan politics. A Freemason ought to be a man with an open mind, willing to analyze anything that comes along, from the humblest to the most scientific. We have heard a great deal about the fundamentalists and the liberals in religion. The fundamentalist backs up and says, "No, that is not according to my notion; I will reject it." The liberalist takes everything that comes along, fails to analyze it well enough to see whether it fits or not. You have heard of a distinguished citizen who was scared to death for fear that somebody would find that his grandfather was a monkey. It is being said that on account of science men are doubting the Bible and rejecting it. This is a purely unthinking, superficial view. My advice is, read all the scientists and all the higher criticism, then analyze them and think it over. I know where you will land. There is no danger to the thinking man of becoming an atheist. All the criticism and all the scientific books, all the theories of creation, when we apply them intelligently and correctly, make the Bible stronger than ever. That which was mere faith before now is substantiated by reason. Do not be afraid of higher criticism. Do not be afraid of the so-called sciences. If the religion you have cannot stand the test of true and proven science, it is not worth very much. Religion will meet all scientific truth and meet it in the proper spirit and in the proper way. It may change some of our preconceived notions, but laying aside these notions, your religion will come out stronger and better than ever. I am not afraid about evolution. I believe in evolution. I cannot see the flowers in the front yard without making me believe in the principles of evolution. These beautiful flowers were once weeds. The process of evolution has made them what they are now. So with everything. But evolution does not necessarily mean monkeyism at all. Even if it did, behind it all stands the fiat, created. We cannot get away from that. I do not care whether this world was made in seven days or whether it took billions of years. Back of it all stands the word, created. So far as the monkey is concerned, if we are evolved from the monkey then it is a fine type of evolution and we must congratulate the monkey. Of course, a great many people are afraid of having their ancestry exposed, and I do not blame them, but the world does not care a fig as to who your grandfather was, but it is asking, "Who are you, what are you going to do?" Even the monkey evolution is not nauseating, as I would rather have a good clean monkey for my great, great, great grandfather than some people I know.

 

A Freemason ought to look things squarely in the face, lay aside his prejudice, and study the question carefully. There is nothing to be afraid of. Let us lay aside our dinky squares and recognize the beautiful and not heave it over among the rubbish because we do not understand it. There are many things that have been thrown in the rubbish heap that in after years were discovered as the most beautiful and important things. Men have lived, wrought hard, and died rejected. It took years before their work was recognized, and they stand today as remarkable men in the history of nations of the world. An open-minded man is never a partisan. It is all right to belong to a party; but it is all wrong to have a party own him, and he fail to exercise horse sense in analyzing questions. A Freemason ought to be an independent man, with no yoke about his neck. When Freemasons can analyze questions, consider them deliberately, come to a rational conclusion, they are coming closer to receiving the Master's Word.

 

THE SECOND LESSON IS SELF-CONTROL

 

The second lesson is that of self-control, obedience to constituted authority. This is taught in the Past Master's Degree. Of course, very few of you have seen this lesson in the degree. This degree is used chiefly in some Grand Jurisdictions as a means of making a fool of a man and, as conferred, is a disgrace to Freemasonry; yet it contains one of the fundamental principles of Freemasonry; that before a man will rule, he must first learn to obey; that before he would teach, he must first be a student; a Craftsman before he will be a Master of the Craft; a subject before he would be a king; and before he would enlighten others, he must become enlightened himself. These principles are fundamental, but the tendency of our present day is, that a man wants to be the boss before he is an Entered Apprentice; be Master of his lodge before he has been an obedient Craftsman. The world is suffering from unprepared men; unprepared for existing conditions; for an honest day's work; for adverse conditions that may arise, possessed of a mere smattering of everything, but little of anything; an expert in all things but an expert in nothing. Undisciplined men, men who lack self-control, are a curse of the age. A disregard of law, and incompetency to perform, is as prevalent among the better class as among the crooks. Bold defiance of law is everywhere present. Men wink at the violation of law, especially the eighteenth amendment. No Freemason will violate this law or wink at the violation thereof. If he does he will never find the Master's Word. A true Past Master has learned the lesson of obedience in the school of discipline, has become master of himself and is thoroughly prepared for the duties upon which he would enter.

 

There must have been supreme satisfaction to King Solomon to erect the magnificent and costly Temple of Jehovah. It represented all that the Oriental mind could conceive as an offering to God. The inspiring display that marked the preliminary step to, and the dedication of, the Temple is one of sublimity and glory. The inspired writer depicted it so graphically, describing this scene, touched the theme with more than mortal pen. Picture the Temple reflecting its golden splendor under the noon-day sun; imagine the great choir chanting antiphonally that wonderful psalm, "Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and let the King of Glory come in." Listen to that inspiring prayer of the King, standing on the brazen scaffold in his rich and kingly robe, see the fire descend on the sacrificial altar, and the Temple illuminated by the Divine Presence, while the vast throng fall prostrate worshipping and praising. "For He is good, for His mercy endureth forever." Who would not like to have witnessed this wonderful scene?

 

But, has not the same scene been re-enacted in many a human heart? It may not have had the external splendor; it may not have been that of a King or Prince, but that of an humble man, who toiled daily, yet this individual, personally dedicated, partook of the same splendor, heard the same choir, uttered the same prayer, and beheld the fire descend on his meager sacrifice, and felt the glory of the Divine Presence. We are, indeed, Temple Builders. Some are building a magnificent temple. Some are building the best temple they can. Men differ in ability. Men differ in opportunities. But it does not matter whether you are building a little temple, building of bricks rather than granite, or bricks without straw, yet the temple is being builded. You and I will have to complete our temple and the last stone must be put in position and may it receive the plaudits as of old, "Grace, grace be unto it."

 

Companions, do you not think that if a man is independent, does square work, and square work only, controls himself and is obedient to constituted authority, who is building a temple in this world, do you not think he is getting pretty close to the Master's Word?

 

HE DESCRIBERS PURPOSE OF THE WEARY SOJOURNERS

 

I have often thought of those three weary sojourners coming out of Babylonian captivity, making their long and toilsome journey from Babylon to Jerusalem with only one purpose in mind, and that was to rebuild the city and the House of the Lord. These three Jews were heroes but, while just released from captivity, it should be remembered that the great age of the Jewish nation was not in regal splendor in its solidarity as a nation, in its armies, in its wealth, or its expansive boundaries, but its golden age was the seventy years of captivity. It was the literary age of Jewry. Out of it came its sacred writings, the collation of its remarkable history of her people, her prophetic literature and her psalter. Had the captivity never occurred the world might have been denied its greatest heritage, the Old Testament. From the school of captivity emerged a people immortal, a people who were the creators of the sacred and undying literature of the world, and the steadfast adherence to Jehovah.

 

Note the purpose and aim of these three weary sojourners. A purpose that was never lost in their long and toilsome journey, on foot, over rough and ragged roads through desolation and amid ruins, but ever onward toward Jerusalem, the city of their fathers. The journey was not taken to secure ease, comfort, emolument or honor, but solely for the purpose of engaging in the noble and glorious work of rebuilding the city and House of the Lord. This truly was a noble purpose, but it did not embrace all, as they did not expect even "the hope of a fee or a reward." This was the climax of their noble purpose. It was unselfish. It was unstinted service, a service to their home, to their people and to their God. What greater encomium can be given to these faithful, devout, returning captives than to say they served? Any portion of the work, however humble, their willing hands were willing to perform. The keystone of the Royal Arch should bear upon it, "I Serve." Service, self-sacrifice, should be the battle cry of Freemasonry, and he who does not wish to serve or sacrifice, will never discover the Master's Word.

 

These three zealous Jews discovered it. They did not discover it in a palace but in a vault. They found it after digging away the rubbish, away from the sight of men, not for worldly applause or honor, but for pure service, and they found it.

 

This is the beautiful story of Freemasonry: The loss of the Master's Word and its recovery by men being fully prepared and qualified searching for it, and willing to make long and toilsome journey through life, with one end in view, to assist the noble and glorious work of building the House of the Lord, working for humanity without the hope of fee or reward. When Freemasonry grasps this idea, that it is a life service, a life of self-sacrifice, then will Royal Arch Masonry come to its own. When we grasp the idea of Royal Arch Masonry as I have tried to explain it, it will not any longer be a mere stepping stone from the lodge to the commandery, but we shall consider it an honor to be Royal Arch Masons, and no higher honor can come to any man than to appreciate and understand Royal Arch Masonry.

 

Companions, many of you are High Priests of your chapters, candidates are coming into your chapters. Will you explain to them this story--that they are searching for eternal truth, or will you make these solemn ceremonies a scene of buffoonery? I sincerely hope not. These ceremonies are too sacred and it would be a sacrilege to introduce anything that is not in keeping with the dignity of Freemasonry. Shrine ceremonies have no place in Freemasonry and only the light-headed and the moron will indulge in it.

 

THERE HAS BEEN TOO MUCH RUSH

 

There was never a time in Freemasonry when this ought to be brought home with greater force. There has been a great rush into Freemasonry. There has been a hip and hoorah about it. Men have come having no conception of what Freemasonry is, but they are going to drop out. The tide is going out. Dimissions and suspensions for non-payment of dues will increase. What are you going to do with this vast amount of unthinking material? Among this material are many good men as well as a mass of driftwood. Many have come without qualifications.

 

Let me tell you a little story. During the Civil War, Senator Vance of North Carolina, one of the most brilliant men of the Southern States, being an active Confederate, was disfranchised by the government. After the war he was elected to the United States Senate. He went to Washington with his certificate of election and was informed that his election was all right, but having been disqualified, and this disability not yet removed, he therefore could not be seated. He was informed that if he would remain in Washington a short time, Congress would doubtless pass a bill removing his disability. But Senator Vance determined to go home. In doing so he took an ordinary coach and a seat opposite two ministers, a Baptist and a Presbyterian. These two Dominies soon became engaged in a warm discussion on the question of foreordination and election. The war waged hotly between the Navy and Infantry of the Lord's Kingdom. After a while, the Presbyterian minister, noticing that Senator Vance was very much interested, said to him, "Stranger, you seem to be interested in our discussion. What is your opinion of election ?" Senator Vance said, "I have a very positive opinion. An election is not worth a damn until your disabilities are removed." This is a good Masonic as well as theological statement. Too many men have been and are still coming in whose disabilities have not been removed. They are here. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to educate them as Freemasonry ought to educate her young men, or are you going to let them drift and finally drop out by taking their dimits or by non-payment of dues? Every man is not fit to be made a Mason. There are some who naturally will drop out if Freemasonry is not congenial. We have moral morons as well as intellectual morons, and a moron is not fit to be made a Mason, whether he be one morally or intellectually. Will you help those that remain ? Are you going to have a circus out of it, or are you going to be sincere and teach these men the great central thought of Freemasonry?  Now, Companions, as Royal Arch Masons, will you please consider these things: that the chapter means much. It is the great stepping stone to the central idea, the Master's Word, the Recovery of it and its interpretation and application. It is not foolishness. It is sincere, dignified work, just as much as the church itself. I sometimes think that if we took Freemasonry sincerely, studied it, brought it out as I have tried to explain to you, it will lead every man to the door of the church .

 

----o----

 

 Letter G

 

By ROB MORRIS

 

That Name! I learned it at a mother's knee When, looking up, the fond and tearful face Beaming upon my eyes so tenderly, She prayed that God her little son would bless!

 

That Name! I spoke it when I entered here And bowed the knee, as each Freemason must; From my heart's center with sincerity I said, "In God, in God is all my trust!"

 

That Name! I saw it o'er the Master's chair "The Hieroglyphic bright," and, bending low, Paid solemn homage at the emblem there That speaks of God, before whom all must bow!

 

That Name! In silence I invoked its power When dangers thickened and when death was nigh! In solemn awe I felt the death clouds lower And whispered, "God be with me if I die!"

 

That Name! the last upon my faltering tongue Ere death shall still it, it shall surely be The Password to the high celestial throng Whose Lord is God in truth and majesty !

 

That Name then, Brothers, always gently speak, Before your father's, mother's name revered! Such blessings from His gracious hand we take, O be His honor to our souls endeared!

 

----o----

 

The Fellowship of Masonry in Alaska

 

BY BRO. CHARLES E. NAGHEL

SECRETARY, MT. JUNEAU LODGE, No. 147, ALASKA

 

THE Territory of Alaska is within the jurisdiction of the M. W. Grand Lodge of Masons of the State of Washington. The list given herewith of Alaska lodges shows the number of Master Masons on the respective rolls at the end of 1924:

                                                    

Lodge	Location	Master Masons
White Pass Lodge, No. 113	Skagway, Alaska	119
Gastineaux Lodge, No. 124	Douglas	104
Anvil Lodge, No. 140	Nome	165
Mt. Juneau Lodge, No. 147	Juneau	195
Ketchikan Lodge, No. 159	Ketchikan	128
Tanana Lodge, No. 162	Fairbanks	203 (The farthest north lodge)
Valdez Lodge, No. 168	Valdez	97
Mt. McKinley Lodge, No. 183	Cordova	111
Seward Lodge, No. 219	Seward	82
Anchorage Lodge, No. 221	Anchorage	219
Petersburg, U. D	Petersburg	20

 

There are small active Masonic clubs at Hanies and Sitka, Alaska. The brethren at the latter place have applied for dispensation, but still lack two dimits of having the requisite fifteen to obtain favorable action on their petition.

 

At Juneau, Alaska, are located the following Scottish Rite bodies: Alaska Lodge of Perfection, No. 1; Alaska Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1; Alaska Council of Kadosh, No. 1, and Alaska Consistory, No. 1.

 

There is an active Scottish Rite club located at Ketchikan, Alaska, and active Shrine clubs are located in all the larger cities of the territory.

 

A chapter of Royal Arch Masons is located in Nome, and commanderies at Anchorage and Fairbanks.

 

The several lodges and clubs throughout the territory have always been active in carrying on the work of the Fraternity and maintaining its high principles.

 

The various lodges are visited by sojourning Masons from jurisdictions scattered throughout the world, and it is not uncommon to find a dozen or more Masonic jurisdictions, including a number of foreign countries, represented at our small Masonic meetings. Oftentimes two or more brethren will meet and make themselves known to each other in the most unexpected manner and in remote places, as while out on hunting or prospecting trips, and these meetings out in the vast researches of an undeveloped territory are quite illustrative of the universality of Freemasonry, for often the brother whom you meet thus unexpectedly hails from a lodge in some distant foreign country.

 

I have experienced the pleasure of such meetings in a small way myself while out on hunting trips. In 1916 I accepted an invitation from an acquaintance, whom I had met occasionally in Juneau when he was here on his infrequent visits to the city, to have my hunting trip with him that fall. I had been informed that he was a Mason and, after making part of the journey by the mail boat and finishing it by traveling in a row boat, I arrived at his little cabin where, by due examination, we established our fraternal relationship, and afterward he climbed up to the attic of the cabin and brought down his Knight Templar's uniform and sword, which he told me had not been out of their cases for many years. He held membership in a lodge and commandery in Idaho. However, we were not on common ground beyond the Blue Lodge, having traveled different routes.

 

SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

 

Several years later, while hunting with this brother, we were camped on the beach on the shore of a large inlet filled with reefs, rocks and small islands. We had finished the day's hunt, and just as night was falling, after we had washed the supper dishes and were cleaning up the arsenal of small arms in the tent, we heard the "put, put" of a small gas boat approaching the camp. I stepped outside the tent and called out to the boat's occupant the directions for making the anchorage in our small sheltered bay, but it was not until he had pulled almost to the shore in his tender that I recognized him as a Mason from Ukiah, Cal., whom I had sat in lodge with several times years previously in Juneau. He had been informed at a small settlement some miles away of my being in the inlet, and he searched about in his little launch until nearly dark before he located our camp. We had an enjoyable and interesting fraternal session in the tent until late into the night, disturbed by no sound outside the tent except the occasional call of a loon, duck or goose, which is music to the hunter; and often the volume of sound from the feathered tribe at night would prompt us to venture the prediction that wing shooting on the morrow would be more attractive than seeking the more toothsome venison.

 

The very nature of our surroundings in Alaska brings members of the Fraternity together in a closer bond than is the case in the more thickly populated communities, I believe. If you ever have the leisure and inclination you should spend a few weeks on one of the most fascinating journeys to be had throughout the world, a trip to our Northland during the summer, and see our wonderful scenery, which has sufficient variety throughout the territory to always be pleasing to the eye as one journeys along. The trip can be made without much expense during the summer tourist season, which time is most attractive to many people, although I always maintain that winter is the most productive of beautiful sights, although not a good time for travel or to make good connections along the route. You would enjoy a visit to Alaska, viewing its attractive scenery and meeting the people that make this land their home. Besides, you would go back to your home with the knowledge that Alaska is a different land than you had conceived it to be at long range.

 

----o----

 

History of Masonry in China

 

Republished from "Encyclopedia Sinica" BRO. I. V. GILLIS, Peking, China, called our attention to an illuminating article on the Craft in China in the "Encyclopedia Sinica." The Oxford University Press, American Branch, 35 West 32nd street, New York City, publishers of the "Encyclopedia," very graciously gave consent to our reprinting it here. We desire to give full credit to the Press, and to the estate of Samuel Couling, editor of the "Encyclopedia." This great reference work is one that may be heartily commended to any and all brethren that may have an interest in China. It may be purchased from the Oxford University Press at $14.00. The article, as here given, is taken from a photostat and printed exactly as it stands except for the sub-heads. It is signed by G.L. The "Cyclopaedia" was published in 1917.

 

FREEMASONS claim the creation of the world as the starting point of their practical Craft. But an immediately following admission tells of the founding of the Original Grand Lodge of England, to which so much of modern Masonry may be traced, and places the origin of that at no earlier date than A. D. 1717. Ireland, Scotland and Massachusetts followed in order with like institutions of their own, the last named forming its Grand Lodge in 1792. Two classes of detractors base their criticisms on these facts, one ridiculing the claim of the ancient lineage, the other running down the institution on account of its modernity. Both are wrong. The claim that the first Mason was the Creator of the Universe need not be discussed, but historic research shows plainly enough that "a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," has existed from time immemorial.

 

China's own records--the finest, best and most complete in the world in some respects--prove that within her borders there was such a system known before the days of Confucius, hundreds of years B.C., and what is more interesting is the fact that the square and compasses were used then as emblems of morality much as they are being used now. We need not feel surprised that this should be so. The early connexion of the Chinese with our own Western ancestors is being slowly but inevitably traced. Similarity in words alone is sufficient to satisfy those who have gone into the matter that there must have been similarity, if not identity, in origin.

 

When Chinese classics, therefore, speak in terms masonic, as, for example, when Mencius urges those in "pursuit of wisdom" to "make use of the compasses and square," we may well surmise that the germ of the idea was common to the progenitors of those who came east on the one side and went west on the other. Confucius at seventy congratulated himself that he could then "venture to follow the inclinations of his heart without fear of transgressing the limits of the square."

 

That the Chinese Triad Society should have a ritual and practice in many respects almost identical with that of Freemasonry need not surprise us, for just as China has for many generations been the happy home of secret societies opposed to the government, so was it--and to some extent is still--in Continental Europe, where only here and there were governments and rulers wise enough to place themselves at the head of such movements. Nine out of ten of the many rebellions in China have been the work of secret societies connected more or less intimately with religious beliefs.

 

When the first Freemasons of Shanghai built for themselves a home in which to meet, they applied to the then Consul for his advice as to the Chinese name which should be given to their hall. Mr. Medhurst had no great difficulty in meeting the request. He knew what has been said above respecting the use by the Chinese of the square and compasses, and advised accordingly. He suggested "Kweikeu-t'ang," or "Compass and Square Hall"--the Chinese reverse the order of the implements--as a fitting title, and the designation being accepted, has continued till the present time to suggest to our native fellow residents, and to the few amongst them who have been accepted as "brethren," that the practices to which the building is dedicated are of that moral and reputable order known from of old and practised by their Great Sage himself.

 

ITS FIRST HOME WAS IN HONGKONG

 

Western Freemasonry on the China coast, however, found its first home, not in Shanghai, but in Hongkong, where the Royal Sussex Lodge, named after the Duke of that title, received its warrant in 1844, and opened its meetings on the 3rd of April, 1845. In 1848 it removed to Canton, where it remained for ten years and was then dormant until its resuscitation in Shanghai in 1863. The original number of the Royal Sussex Lodge was 735. It is now 501, and it is thus senior to the Northern Lodge of China, the first to be formed in Shanghai, whose number is 570. Both are under the English Constitution.

 

The Northern Lodge warrant is dated Dec. 27, 1849, the lodge at first being No. 832. Its first place of meeting was in the Kiangsi road (then Church street), where it occupied a Chinese building, much as one of the Weihaiwei lodges did recently. Thence it migrated to a building of its own in the Nanking road (then Park lane). Outgrowing its accommodation, it was compelled to make a fresh move, and for some time used a building in the Foochow road. Meanwhile its second hall was being built in the Canton road, where it still stands. But, once again, developments necessitated a change, this time to the Bund, where the foundation stone of the new building was laid on the 3rd of July, 1865. Most unfortunate as to the circumstances which immediately followed, the new Masonic hall found itself one of two "white elephants" which the Shanghai community had on its hands. The other was Trinity Church, now the Cathedral. Shanghai had had its fat years during the late fifties and early sixties when the Taiping rebels were over-running the province. Its lean ones dated from the overthrow of those pests at Nanking in 1864, and for years the cost of the two big buildings was felt very severely by the small and comparatively impoverished community. The Northern Lodge, however, bore half the burden of the hall, the other half being carried by the Royal Sussex and the Tuscan Lodges in the ratio of 3 to 1.

 

The Tuscan Lodge warrant dates from Aug. 18, 1864. As a working lodge it has had its ups and downs, but during the course of its existence it has provided three District Grand Masters, Bros. Miller, Moore and Hough, for Freemasonry in the Far East, and is now reported to be in a highly flourishing financial condition.

 

Royal Arch Freemasonry began in Shanghai in 1861 with the charter of the Zion Chapter, working under the Northern Lodge, No. 570, E. C. It continued alone till 1869, when the Rising Sun R. A. Chapter, under the Scottish Constitution, was formed. The Zion Chapter has ever been one of the most successful of Far Eastern Masonic bodies, and its list of Past First Principals contains many names of men who made their mark in Shanghai history in other than Masonic circles.

 

But it is now time to turn to constitutions other than the English. All three made their debut in Shanghai. The year 1864, the last of the fat years, was prolific of Masonic growth. We have seen that the Royal Sussex was re-constituted in Shanghai in 1863. On the very same day the Lodge of Assiduity was formed. It was on the 7th of March, 1864, that the Lodge Cosmopolitan, working under the Scottish Constitution, was granted its warrant. The Tuscan immediately followed, as we have seen, and on the 14th of December it was the turn of the American Constitution to come in with a warrant for the formation of the Ancient Landmark Lodge.

 

It is not necessary here to dilate on the slight differences existing between the English, Scotch and Massachusetts Constitutions. They are all in the realm of detail, not of principle, and the consequences have almost without exception been very happy, for while unity in principle secures solidarity in essentials, diversity in working is always attractive to visiting brethren who delight in tracing similarities and contrasts in the differing rituals.

 

COSMOPOLITAN LODGE BEGAN IN 1864

 

The Cosmopolitan Lodge, No. 428, S. C., began working in 1864 under the mastership of one of the best known of the older Shanghai Masons, W. Bro. C. M. Donaldson. It has always been a strong lodge, and was long distinguished for its charitable work. The Saltoun Lodge, No. 936, S. C., dates from Dec. 23, 1902.

 

The Ancient Landmark Lodge, acting under the Constitution of Massachusetts, began work on the 9th of May, 1864, and sprang rapidly into complete success. It was the outcome of the meeting of a few friends at the house of Dr. H. W. Boone, who, with Bro. Hill- -afterwards well known for his connexion with Gen. Ward of the "Ever Victorious Army"--and Bro. Blanchard, was one of the leading lights in Masonic circles for years after. Bro. Eames, learned in the law, and father of the great singer, Madame Emma Eames, was another of the little fraternity, as was the learned gentleman who in later years became Bishop of the American Episcopal Church in China, Bishop Schereschewsky. Amongst the list of Past Masters of this lodge will be found W. Bros. Hill, Eames, Jansen, the Rev. J. R. Hykes, D. D., and E. T. Williams, some time Charge d'Affaires for the United States in Peking.

 

The Keystone Royal Arch Chapter may be looked on as an offshoot of the Ancient Landmark Lodge, as its mainstays were found amongst the stalwarts of that body. Its charter dates from the 20th of September, 1871.

 

Other Masonic bodies founded in the early days of the settlement should be noted here, the first of which was the "Celestial Encampment," embodying Knight Templar and other degrees not officially recognised by the English Constitution. Its charter dates back to Oct. 3, 1862. In 1877 its name was changed to that of the "Celestial Preceptory," under which it was the only body in China conferring degrees of Masonic Knighthood. In 1900 it ceased to exist, but has since been resuscitated. The Cathay Rose Croix was another. It came into existence under a warrant dated May 18, 1869, and conferred degrees following the Royal Arch to the 18th. It has long been extinct.

 

The warrant for the construction of a Provincial Grand Lodge of the Royal Order of Scotland is dated Aug. 10, 1865, and W. Bro. C. M. Donaldson was appointed first P.G.M., an office held for life. This post he continued to fill till 1892, when, after his death, his mantle fell upon P.G.M. Bro. J. H. Osborne, who held it until 1916, when he resigned and was succeeded by Bro. M. E. H. Wells. The Royal Order differs from the degrees that precede it in being purely Christian in tendency. It embraces two parts, the second of which is a degree of Knighthood.

 

A few other interesting occurrences in the olden days may be recorded. The first Masonic Ball was held in 1865, but it was not till 1874 that another provided a small surplus and so formed the nucleus of the Masonic Charity Fund, which has done so much good in Shanghai and elsewhere. In 1866 the foundation stone of the present Cathedral was laid with fitting Masonic ceremonial. In 1867 the Masonic hall on the Bund was dedicated. It has since been rebuilt and adapted to modern requirements. In 1868 Ningpo joined the fraternity by forming the "Star of Peace" Lodge, No. 1217, E. C. It lasted but two years, however. During the year following, Shanghai Scotsmen formed a new lodge, St. Andrew in the Far East, No. 493, S. C. Dr. Coghill was its first Master and it had every promise of a long and successful career. But its hopes were shattered and the lodge came to an end in 1874. The Hankow was next to try its hand with "The Star of Central China," No. 511, S. C. This was in 1871.

 

 The Hankow Lodge might have been known as the Tea Lodge, for its founders were mainly engaged in the great tea trade of the port as it then was. When that fell off, and regular residents became fewer, the lodge lapsed. Since 1901, however, its place has been supplied by the Far Cathay Lodge, No. 2,855, E. C.

 

A GERMAN LODGE WAS INAUGURATED

 

The year 1872 saw the inauguration of the Lodge Germania, which had a chequered career for some ten years and was then closed. Dr. Zachariae was one of its Masters, and the lodge was revived in 1895 by no less a celebrity than W. Bro. P. G. von Mollendorff, since which time it has been in regular working order. In this, as in all other cases, members of the English Constitution freely gave their aid wherever it was possible and necessary.

 

In 1909 an effort was made to start a lodge under the Dutch Constitution, and the English District Grand Lodge had the pleasure of performing the Consecration ceremony, but the experience of the following year proved that an insufficient number of resident members was forthcoming and the warrant was returned to the Hague.

 

The story of the development of District Grand Lodges in China is one of considerable interest. The first W. M. of the Royal Sussex Lodge, Bro. J. H. Murray, was also the first Provincial Grand Master of the whole Masonic Province of China, and the W. M. who succeeded him in the chair of the Royal Sussex also succeeded to the honor of the Prov. Grand Mastership. This was Bro. S. Rawson. It was not till 1877 that this immense "Province" was divided into two "Districts" of North and South China. Bro. Cornelius Thorne was the first D. G. M. of the Northern section and held the post for eight years. Leaving for home in 1885, he was succeeded by Bro. J. I. Miller, who in turn resigned in 1896, and was followed by Bro. L. Moore, who held the office till his death in 1903. Bro. W. H. Anderson was the next incumbent, and remained in office till his departure for home in 1908, Bro. R. S. Ivy filling the vacancy in the following year and still remaining in office, thus surpassing in length of service all his predecessors.

 

A D. G. M. is entitled to Past Rank only after a service of three years. His office is by no means a sinecure. He has the appointment annually of a score or more of officers to serve under him in the District Grand Lodge, and he is in undisputed control of all the lodges--be they few or many--of his own Constitution in the district over which he rules. Territorially in China he may have to share his sway with D. G. M's of other Constitutions who, of course, rule only over lodges using their own ritual and having warrants granted by their own Grand Lodges. As matters stand at present [the Cyclopaedia was published in 1917], the lodges under the District Grand Lodge of Northern China, E. C., are as follows:

 

Name of Lodge	No.	Date of Warrant	Situation
Royal Sussex	501	18-9-1844	Shanghai
Northern Lodge of China	570	27-12-1849	Shanghai
Tuscan	1027	18-8-1864	Shanghai
Doric	1433	5-4-1873	Chinkiang
Union Lodge of Tientsin	1951	16-11-1881	Tientsin
Northern Star of China	2673	7-9-1897	Newchwang
Far Cathay	2855	1-5-1901	Hankow
Coronation	2931	13-5-1902	Tientsin
Daintree	2938	1-9-1901	Weihaiwei
Tongshan Lodge	3001	15-3-1904	Tongshan

 

The Kiukiang Lodge in consequence of constant removals from the port and an insufficient number of permanent residents found itself unable, in 1914, to carry on its regular meetings and so lapsed. The date given for the warrant of the Tongshan Lodge is actually the date of its consecration. This Lodge has had the peculiar experience of losing its warrant by theft, and of being compelled in consequence to go into recess until a new one had been obtained. Some years ago the present writer paid a flying visit to this remarkable little community which was then the proud possessor of a racecourse, a club, a rifle association, a church and a Masonic Hall, with what other social centres is not recorded, while the census showed a total, including the last baby, of seventy-five souls only.

 

This fact points to one of the causes of the spread of Masonry in the Treaty Ports of China. As it is now in such a place as Tongshan, so it once was in Shanghai, Tientsin, etc. Men formed lodges for companionship. Now, when social amenities in the larger settlements are multiplied, that particular attraction is not only lost, but is antagonised by endless other facilities provided by clubs of every description. It is only in the outports that the earlier conditions are repeated.

 

AMERICAN D. D. G. M'S ARE NAMED

 

From the earliest days the American lodges have had the advantage of a District Deputy Grand Master, the following being the list of worthy brethren who have held the post: Bros. C. E. Hill, first W. M. of the Ancient Landmark Lodge, W. C. Blanchard, J. B. Eames, D. C. Jansen, A. W. Danforth, J. R. Hykes, George A. Derby and Dr. Stacey A. Ransom, the present incumbent. But it was not till 1915 that the number of American lodges was sufficient to call for the formation of a regularly organized District Grand Lodge. Application then made to the Grand Master of the State of Massachusetts resulted in the issue of a charter, and the ceremony of installation of R. W. Bro. Dr. Ransom was conducted by the D. G. M. of the English Constitution, R. W. Bro. R. S. Ivy, assisted by the officers of the English D. G. Lodge. This interesting ceremony occurred on the 24th of November, 1915, and the new District Grand Lodge held its first annual meeting on the 27th of December, 1916.

 

For many years the Ancient Landmark was the only lodge under the rule of the American District Deputy Grand Masters, but on the 28th of January, 1904, the Sinim Lodge was organized, at first under the name of the Cathay Lodge, its first Master being Clinton, son of the late R. W. Bro. D. C. Jansen. Another, the Shanghai Lodge, has its charter dated Sept. 14, 1904. A provisional warrant was given to the Peiho Lodge of Tientsin, but the only occupant of the chair was W. Bro. L. C. Emery, the lodge finding itself incapable of carrying on.

 

China's capital, curiously enough, held out longer against Masonic influences than any of the Treaty Ports of importance. It was not until the 2nd of October, 1915, that an International Lodge was established in Peking, which has since received its warrant from the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, and is thus under the control of the American D. G. Lodge. On the 4th of November, 1916, a Lodge of Perfection-- 14th Degree--of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was also opened by Illustrious C. S. Lobingier, holding an Honorary 33rd Degree. No fewer than 17 Master Masons received higher degrees at the temporary Masonic Hall on the Austrian Glacis on that date, but the most interesting portion of the ceremony was an adjournment to the Temple of Heaven and the working of several degrees in the Emperor's Robing Chamber. W. Bro. Pettus was installed as first V. M., and amongst the officers was Bro. C. C. Wu, son of the well known Chinese diplomatist and statesman, Dr. Wu Ting-fang.

 

The higher degrees just mentioned form part of the complete system known as the Ancient and Accepted Rite of Freemasonry (U. S. A.), which was established more than a century ago in Charleston, South Carolina. Its Shanghai members were consolidated on the 19th of September, 1901, into the following bodies:

 

The Yangtze Lodge of Perfection, No. 4, under Bro. G. A. Derby.

The Shanghai Chapter Rose Croix, No. 3, under Bro. G. A. Derby

The Cathay Council of Kadosh, No. 2, under Bro. John Goodnow.

The Orient Consistory, No. 1, under Bro. John Goodnow.

 

The Ancient and Accepted Rite, under the "Supreme Council of England," is thought to have originated in France about the middle of the 18th century. As has already been remarked, the Grand Lodge of England concerns itself with none but the first three degrees with the Royal Arch, but it will be of interest to the Craft as well as to the general reader to have a list of the thirty-three degrees as recognised under the Ancient and Accepted Rite. They are the following:

 

1. Entered Apprentice.

2. Fellowcraft.

3. Master Mason.

4. Secret Master.

5. Perfect Master.

6. Intimate Secretary.

7. Provost and Judge.

8. Superintendent of the Buildings.

9. Elected Knights of the Nine.

10. Illustrious Elect of Fifteen.

11. Sublime Knights Elected.

12. Grand Master Architect.

13. Knight of the Ninth Arch.

14. Grand Elect, Perfect and Sublime Mason.

15. Knight of the Sword of the East.

16. Prince of Jerusalem.

17. Knight of the East and West.

18. Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix.

19. Grand Pontiff.

20. Grand Master of all Symbolic Lodges.

21. Noachite or Prussian Knight.

22. Knight of the Royal Axe, or Prince of Libanus.

23. Chief of the Tabernacle.

24. Prince of the Tabernacle.

25. Knight of the Brazen Serpent.

26. Prince of Mercy, or Scotch Trinitarian.

27. Sovereign Commander of the Temple.

28. Knight of the Sun.

29. Grand Scotch Knight of St. Andrew.

30. Grand Elect Knight of Kadosh.

31. Grand Inspector, Inquisitor Commander.

32. Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

33. Sovereign Grand Inspector General.

 

One form of Masonic activity, the working of the Mark Degree in a separate lodge, has so far been left unnoticed. The District of N. China possesses but two of these lodges, the Orient Mark Lodge, No. 482, E. C., at Shanghai, and the Northern Lodge of China of Mark Masons, No. 583, E. C., at Weihaiwei. The former was established in 1894, its first Master being Bro. F. M. Gratton. The latter first saw the light in 1906. The Mark Degree is conferred under other constitutions without the formation of separate lodges.

 

CHINESE MASONRY HAS FINE RECORD FOR CHARITY

 

Freemasonry has many claims to the honor and respect of the world, but none based on surer foundation than its first and foremost practice, the practice of charity. We have shown that the brotherhood dates its beginning on the China coast from the year 1844, but when we find that the first Charity Fund was not founded till thirty years afterwards, in 1874, we must not jump to the conclusion that Craft benevolence slumbered all that time. It was not so. Whatever was required to minister to the needs of those in distress came freely from the pockets of individual brethren or the treasury of individual lodges. In 1874, however, a Masonic ball surplus of $529 formed the nest-egg of the first combined fund in which all Shanghai lodges of whatever constitution could find membership. At first a rather haphazard undertaking, the fund made but slow progress, working, so to speak, from hand to mouth. Bro. Gratton re-organized it under bye-laws in 1888, and since then its progress had been ever onward and upward. Its present invested funds amount to Tls. 32,500.00 and are supported by all lodges in the district.

 

Tientsin and district has followed Shanghai's example and now has a thriving Charity Fund of its own. In times gone by it subscribed freely to the Shanghai Fund. Newchwang has done the like, and the volume of its fund is a telling tribute to the generosity of its small community.

 

Much might be said of the high standing of prominent Masons in China in other walks of life. The list includes at least one Bishop, many high church dignitaries, many Consular officials, various Knights, a large body of representatives from the liberal professions, many heads of firms, and a vast body of "just and upright" men who have carried on the traditions of the Craft after the manner which, in all ages, has led monarchs themselves to become "promoters of the art." One of the most prominent of Masonic historians was Bro. R. F. Gould, once Secretary to the Shanghai Municipal Council, and a member of the Northern Lodge.

 

The two public schools of Shanghai, for boys and girls, owe their origin to that founded by the Masonic Fraternity in 1886. For years the lodges provided a liberal prize fund which has now been consolidated and forms three valuable scholarships tenable for three years. The Craft hold in perpetuity the right to nominate four free scholars, boys or girls, in the Municipal Schools, in return for their outlay on the original institution.

 

As a further outgrowth from the ranks of the Fraternity may be mentioned the Masonic Club at Shanghai. This institution dates from the 1st of April, 1882, has its quarters in the Masonic building on what is one of the very best sites in the Model Settlement, and has always filled a well recognised position in Shanghai clubdom. It is not likely that there exist many cities where Masonry is stronger, in proportion to its Western population, than it is in Shanghai.

 

----o----

 

The Old Tyler

 

By ROB MORRIS

 

God bless the Old Tyler! how long he has trudged, Through sunshine and storm, with his "summonses due!" No pain nor fatigue the Old Tyler has grudged To serve the great Order, Freemasons, and you.

 

God bless the Old Tyler! how oft he has led The funeral procession from Lodge door to grave! How grandly his weapon has guarded the dead To their last quiet home where the Acacia boughs wave.

 

God bless the Old Tyler; how oft he has knocked, When, vigilant, strangers craved welcome and rest! How widely your portals, though guarded and locked, Have swung to the signal the Tyler knows best!

 

There's a Lodge where the door is not guarded nor tyled There's a Land without graves, without mourners or sin There's a Master most gracious, paternal and mild And He waits the Old Tyler, and bids him come in!

 

And there the Old Tyler, no longer outside-- No longer with weapon of war in his hand-- A glorified spirit, shall grandly abide And close by the Master, high honored, shall stand.

 

----o----

 

Shall Grand Lodge Become a Nursing Mother?

 

BY BRO. DONALD HUGHES, California

 

BRO. HUGHES is a genial philosopher who has the knack of expressing his opinions with such good humor as to please even those who most violently disagree with him. We are hoping that he will let us publish three or four other essays about which he has been gossiping in a number of recent letters.

 

LET'S philosophize a little! It is a harmless pastime with occasional utility, and seldomly does anybody serious harm, more especially if the so-called philosopher is as absent-minded and grandfatherly as myself. There is sometimes a little excitement to be had out of it, too; hardly anybody can ever tell what a philosopher is aiming at until he gets there, and then sometimes, as the Irisher said, it isn't the place at all but another. You remember Professor Huxley's gentle jibe at good Bishop Berkeley? He said the sainted metaphysician began his discourse with tar water and ended with the Trinity. Huxley added, it may be recalled irrelevantly for the sake of the fun, that the pages on tar water were much the better !

 

My friend The Editor has asked me to contribute to THE BUILDER a few of my lucubrations. I have warned him of my awful habit of digressing, of pausing by the way to gossip about this and that, of all my literary lapses, my ingrained garrulousness, and other faults, but he has insisted natheless; perhaps after I have once wandered all over the inside of the magazine he will recant. (Others have done as much.) Public taste in letters is all for speed and jazz. People want their literature served up in rapid little packages, like bullets. They have gazed so much on the face of the flapper that they have lost taste for gazing on the face of truth. The shop girl going to work attired in satin slippers, and a few other things, is setting the fashion for books. "Make it snappy!" is our motto. The bread of life has become gingerbread; the wine of life has become coca-cola.

 

I am not comfortable in this atmosphere. To me it is a heresy to suppose that the history of the world can be crowded into an Outline, or that the poetry of existence can be expressed in five lines of vers libre, or that the drama of life can be presented in one act. I like the rigor of the game but, like Charles Lamb's Mrs. Battle, I prefer to play it with my friends in front of the open fire. The old-fashioned essay is my favorite literary form; its leisureliness pleases me, its winding in and about through its subject; the sense it conveys of plenty of time, as if the author knew well enough that we human beings may as well begin to practice the eternal life right now. You can make a machine as rapidly as you please, but you cannot make a human being that way; life grows, and growth takes time, under the patient sun and the unhurried rains, with time for doing nothing and for dreams. All that is as true in our lodge life as anywhere else. It grinds me to see the Third Degree rushed through, with candidates "initiated" in gangs, and everybody screwed up to the pitch of haste; we shall never teach our novices the lesson of immortality unless we take time for it.

 

Let that pass ! What I started to philosophize about is history, among other things. Not history in general, in the sense of everything that has ever happened, but history as understood by Trevelyan, Wells, Robinson, Breasted, Macaulay, Greene, Hume, Hallam, Gibbon, Freeman, Bishop Stubbs, and all those disciples of Clio who write big books and organize themselves into learned societies.

 

Do their labored disquisitions have any value above the literary pleasure they furnish bookworms like you and me ? Can one make any practical use of their chronicles ? Can history be applied ? Is there any method for plotting out the future on the strength of what we have learned about the past? Are Guglielmo Ferrero, Lathrop Stoddard and President Herbert Spencer Hadley warranted in telling us what America is coming to on the strength of what happened two thousand years ago in Rome ? What these queries amount to, I believe, may be jammed into one short question of four words--is history a science?

 

HISTORY IS AN ART

 

For myself I agree with Mr. Trevelyan in his Clio, a Muse, where he argues that history is an art rather than a science because it is of the essence of any real science to permit its devotee to foretell the future, whereas the historian can do nothing of the kind, as anyone knows from the sorry failure that has attended every well meant effort of an historian to don the mantle of the prophet. The astronomer can tell you to the second when Halley's Comet will next put in its appearance because he knows when it has been here before, but no historian on top of Mother Earth can make any similar prediction. A thing can occur ten thousand times in the historian's realm and then never occur again.

 

There are obvious reasons for this, of course. Man is by nature an unpredictable being. The mere fact that he possesses such a thing as a history means that his world is always making new beginnings, new departures, new experiments; unforeseen factors irrupt into it; if it were everlastingly repeating itself there would be no news to tell about it, and hence no history, which is news about the past. Who foresaw the railway ? the automobile ? the aeroplane ? wireless ? What biologist can tell when human heredity will take a Mendelian leap into an utterly unexpected variety, with a new kind of blood, a new cast of human brain? Because the unexpected happens, nobody can tell what to expect, therefore there can be no prediction and consequently no science.

 

The historian is an artist. Like every other practitioner of that gild he picks and chooses among his possible materials for those which suit him, leaving out of account what some other artist may consider of first value, for the purpose of shaping its plastic substance into impressive forms that please him and may possibly please his readers.

 

In saying that the historian is an artist, I have in mind the large true sense of that word and not merely a painter of pictures. Now the one chief and all engrossing subject of all art is human nature. The artist's proper study is mankind. Even the art of architecture has man for its theme; a building takes its shape' and structure not in order to reveal the geological nature of the stones but to exhibit the purpose and aspirations of the men who will live or work inside it. Every artist, in any possible medium, is out to show man something about himself, to reveal him to himself, to put him into completer possession of himself, so that he can the better shape and govern and enjoy his own life. This is as true of those forms of art which seem farthest removed from us as of the more immediate and intimate forms, such as lyric poetry. Art is a history of human life presented through the forms of the imagination; it may ignore facts but it cannot ignore truths. Our Ritual, which as I believe is one of the masterpieces of the world's art, is a history of the human heart in some of its deeper moods and more tragical moments.

 

I should like to say here that we shall never understand the art of fiction writing properly until we come to think of it as an attempt to give us this same kind of history. The notion that it is a novelist's business to construct frothy tales out of his fancy to furnish pastime to idle souls seems to me a libel on all the wise and true practitioners of that great art. Imagine a Conrad, a Willa Cather, a W. H. Hudson, a Balzac, a Henry James wasting his time at such petty stuff ! It is ridiculous! Those and all others like them have in view the serious purpose of telling the truth about human life; when they deceive us by telling lies about it they cease to be great novelists. And that is the trouble in chief with so many of the poor novels that often become so popular (no need to mention any names); they mis-represent man's nature, and therefore practice deception on the unwary minds that steep in their pages.

 

CONRAD IS GIVEN AS AN EXAMPLE

 

Consider as in point here Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. This admirable and heroic novelist cherished in his boyhood among the Polish plains far removed from salt water the dream of becoming a sailor on an English ship, and then lived out his dream against all the odds of race and language. That done he turned novelist and left behind him--he has recently passed into the Unseen--the most valuable body of fiction given us by any writer of this present day. The professional critic may value his books for the skillful managements of his themes, or for his sophisticated style, but others of us love them for their truth. Perhaps there was never a real Jim; never a young sailor who caved in when he believed his ship to be going down; never such a hidden and barbarous land as that in which he tried so nobly to bury his shame; but what does it matter ? The story of this young "Tuan" is a transcript of human nature, true and revealing, and every reader is the wiser for having read it; wiser, that is, not alone because he understands others better, and the world better, but for knowing his own nature better. And what a mystery is this nature of ours! It is our own, but at the same time not our own, much of it lying outside our own self-grasp as distantly and strangely as the Malay Archipelago or the Indian Ocean, so that to have it laid bare to ourselves, and interpreted, is a great gift to our wisdom, and enables us to know and therefore to manage our lives the better. To write a novel, such as this, is as much a feat as to write a great history; in either event the purpose is a truthful unveiling of human nature. The historian makes his interpretation by means of known facts about the past; the novelist by means of truths won through the imagination. One is as valuable, for "serious," or any other purposes, as the other.

 

I have long believed that we make a great mistake in supposing that a historian is necessarily concerned with the so-called "dead past." For one thing, it is not a fact, as a rapid reading of the biographies of historians will prove. Some of them have been learned pundits completely divorced from the present, and more excited about the size of a stone in King Tut's tomb than about the living world; but for the most part (one recalls Macaulay, Gibbon, Mommsen and a score beside) they have been moi e interested in present affairs than the majority of men are, and for that very reason have become historians. For another thing, the past is not "dead," not much of it anyhow, but very much alive, most of it quite busily at work in our present day. For time, as Bergson made us see with his persuasive eloquence, is a continuum, like the flow of a river, carrying with it into the future what it has gathered up in the past. Consider your own life ! The experiences of your boyhood have not been left behind you, like stones lying inertly on a road; they continue functioning inside you, influencing you as much now, perhaps, or even more than at the time they occurred. To condemn history, which is literature dealing with old events, in the name of the urgent needs of the present is to be peculiarly short-sided about that same present. Almost everything that lives and moves in our own immediate world derives its momentum and its vigor from past generations.

 

With this understanding of the matter we can easily see in what sense history, the record of times past, can be put to the service of the present and of the future. By knowing what men have been in the past, how they have behaved in certain conditions, what motives have moved them, what inspirations have drawn them along, what hopes have animated them, we are the better enabled to understand what is going on about us, and what we may reasonably expect will grow from present conditions in the future. This is the truth of Goethe's profound saying, already quoted, I recall, several times in THE BUILDER, that "men change but man remains the same." There can be no predictions of matter of fact but there can be anticipations; anticipations of the future based on knowledge of men in the past. For these reasons and in this sense I believe that Ferrero, Stoddard, Hadley and the others are safely within their province in warning us -- about the trends in the present world from their knowledge of how we humans have behaved under similar conditions in past generations.

 

THE CITY IS A KEY TO OUR PROBLEM

 

A rapid survey of a number of such books as are represented by those of these authors--I have a stack of them on the table before me as I write--shows that the thing which bulks largest in their troubled view of our modern world is the preponderant place of the large city in our life, and of the industrial and economic system that has brought these huge towns into existence. There is no need here to go into a detailed analysis of the problem of the city as envisaged by them, for space is limited; it will be sufficient to quote an utterance, already become familiar, of James Bryce, who was as keen a critic of his own times as he was a keen historian, and who succeeded better than most in bringing the lessons of the past to bear on the difficulties of the present. He said these words to a group of Americans about to leave London for home, and they were directed at American cities, but their application is general:

 

"Go back to the splendid world across the sea; but don't you make a failure of it. You cannot go on twenty-five years more in your great cities as you have been doing. Don't you do it. If you do, you will set us liberals back in Europe five hundred years." (For this quotation, and for a striking work on the whole subject, see The Challenge of the City, by Josiah Strong; his statistics are now out of date, but his general treatment is as valid as ever.)

 

This problem of the city is the key to a number of the most perplexing problems of government. For consider. In a stable rural community an individual is buttressed and supported by the whole neighborhood; he is linked to his neighbors by a lifetime of associations, and to many of them by ties of blood. If he is out of work he doesn't need to appeal to some stranger in an employment bureau; if he loses all his money he isn't thrown upon "organized charity, scrimped and iced, in the name of a cautious statistical Christ"; if he becomes ill the neighbors come in to help nurse him; and if he dies penniless he isn't buried in a Potter's Field. He has moral resources outside himself; his character has roots in the neighborhood.

 

Put the same man in a great city to live among indifferent strangers and nobody will care much whether he lives or dies. He no longer wages the battle of life upheld and assisted by a neighborhood but goes it alone, and as a result may very well become economically morally and physically bankrupt. The time comes when he is overwhelmed by his own sense of isolated helplessness.

 

And meanwhile the same industrial process that has thus herded him and his family into a roaring community of strangers has been reacting on those left in rural communities. A farmer no longer raises produce for a local market well understood by himself but for a distant city market over which he has no individual control; the mysterious juggling of prices by distant influences may cause it to turn out that a bumper crop will bankrupt him; and in the course of time he will very likely find himself mortgaged to money lenders sent out from the towns.  What will men do under such circumstances? The historians tell us they will most probably do what they have nearly always done when similarly situated: they will begin to call loudly upon the government to help them out; they will ask it to guarantee wages for them, and prices; they will want all manner of subsidies and grants from the public purse. The national government will become more and more complicated, adding bureau to bureau, until finally it becomes a despotism; and meanwhile the dependent and helpless groups and blocs will have become pauperized, because it is as plain as the nose on your face that a man who accepts money from his government is indirectly accepting it as a gift from those classes that have money wherewith to pay taxes. Once this process gets under way it automatically perpetuates itself; the very subsidies create new reasons for further subsidies, and so on ad infinitum. It is an old, old story !

 

For purposes of offering tangible proof of these rather sweeping generalizations let me refer you to the last report of the Census Bureau, capitulated and summarized by Bradstreet's. In 1915 the average state in the Union increased its per capita tax on us from $4.66 in 1915 to $10.71 less than ten years later. In the same period the per capita net indebtedness for the average state increased from $4.31 to $8.12. The cost of government increased 158.7 per cent in the same years. There is only one possible interpretation of these stark figures: they mean that power, wealth and activity is rapidly pyramiding in government. It seems to me that this process is getting a strangle hold on our own government, and I am afraid that the deadly process has only just begun. So far as such things are concerned we face a melancholy future. We shall have not the "Great State" or the "Servile State" that so many publicists are writing about, but what is much worse, a Maternal State, a state that has become a mere nursing mother to its weak citizens.

 

WHY BREED WEAKLINGS?

 

It was this thing that poured so much rage into the sensitive soul of Nietzsche, who, whatever may have been his faults otherwise, saw into the core of this whole situation with clairvoyant clearness. "Why do we go on with a system," he demanded, "that automatically breeds classes of weaklings ? Do we not know that when these weaklings have become numerically powerful they will pull everything else down to their own level ? Strength will be submerged in weakness, and the foolish will govern the wise!" It perturbs me to see so many Masons swept into this habit of calling on their own central government, the Grand Lodge, in this selfsame manner. One might suppose, to judge from a dozen indications, that the individual Mason and the individual lodge had lost all power or ability, the way they ask Grand Lodge to become a nursing mother for them. They want Grand Lodge to manage their charities, to superintend their new building enterprises, to look after them as if they were helpless infants; they even become afraid to ask a man into lodge to give a speech without first creating a Grand Lodge bureau to do it for them. What has become of the old sturdy independence of character by which our early brethren went out into the wilds beyond the frontier where there were no Grand Lodges? Has it all leaked out of our natures? It is idle to justify this steady centralization of activity on the score that we need discipline and order; you can't have discipline among sheep!

 

When I was a young man I was so much oppressed by the various and sundry social evils about me that I almost became a professional reformer. It seemed to me that one could find no better way of investing his life than in an effort to help tidy up and clean up and better organize our communal life; and I believed that much of that work could be accomplished without impossible difficulty if only "the people" could be brought to recognize the evils and to accept the methods. Like other members of the group in which I worked I devoured barrels of books. They were good books, and they are still to be recommended: books by Henry Demarest Loyd, Josiah Strong, Professor Rauschenbusch, Elisha Mulford, and scores more like them. I distinctly recall what an excitement it caused when H. G. Wells first arrived on the scene; it seemed to some of us that we could never tire of his brilliant cataracts of words, his tireless preaching of a new "World Order."

 

Well, I remained as much interested in seeing our social life made more sound and beautiful as ever I was but somehow I lost interest in most of the reforms specifically advocated. In analyzing them in after years, I have come to believe that I lost interest in them because at the core of the majority of them I found an unconfessed, or half confessed, scheme to throw all the problems upon the shoulders of the State or National Government. The same thing is true, as I understand them, of most of the schemes being proposed today. (I am not discussing politics.) Your typical radical wants things bettered but he usually wants them bettered by the State. He wants to shift the responsibility from the individual on Main street to some other individual in Washington. He loses sight of the patent fact that the individual in Washington has no more ability or wisdom or idealism than the individual on Main street; and that if the individual in Washington manages life for the individual on Main street, poor Main street will be worse off at the end than before.

 

I am not trying to break any lances against national or united effort in Masonry, least of all in the field of Masonic education, or for the sake of such concerted relief work as the project of a National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanitarium; but I do believe that we need to be on our guard lest we become a Fraternity governed paternalistically, which is the last way any real man wishes to be governed.

 

To my own way of thinking there is a very deep distinction to be made among all the programs of centralized Masonry. If such a program asks Grand Lodge to serve as a committee of the whole, and as an agency through which individual Masons and lodges can better perform their work, we can have general unity of action without pyramiding authority; unless I have misunderstood its methods the George Washington National Masonic Memorial project could be so described, for in most cases its money was raised locally and voluntarily, Grand Lodge being only a machinery of collection. But if in carrying out some such program Grand Lodge takes the place of the individual and of the local lodge; if it acts in lieu of men; if it takes money from its own treasury that should come from the member or his lodge; if, in short, it acts because individuals have failed to act, then it has become a paternalism.

 

THE TRUE RADICAL IS DESCRIBED

 

If I find myself in a quarrel with many of my Masonic brethren on our own Main streets, it is because they are falling into this habit. They may call themselves "radicals" but at bottom they are not radicals at all. A radical should be fearless and daring, willing to fight alone with his back to a wall. All the efforts to have Grand Lodge become a nursing mother are not of that character; it is the timid, nerveless, half-scared individual who wants to be nursed and chaperoned through life. I believe that we need a new radicalism in Masonry, a radicalism that will boldly place responsibility exactly where it belongs, asking for no charity, with each individual Mason willing to stand the gaff in his own right, and not begging for help from outside. For that reason I was rejoiced to come upon a paragraph or two in Bro. Ashley A. Smith's Report on Foreign Correspondence in the Grand Lodge Proceedings of Maine for 1924. His words cap off my argument better than my own:

 

"The writer of this report would desire no higher praise than to be termed a Masonic conservator of the school of Josiah H. Drummond or a traditionalist of the type of Albro E. Chase, because in the truest meaning of the word these men of Maine were radicals of a vital type even though they are invariably termed conservatives. How far have we traveled from the original meaning of the word - radical, - may be seen when we consult the lexicon and find it to mean--one who goes to the roots of truth. Surely no one thinks of a radical today in that way. The usual meaning of the word is quite different in the minds of the majority of men, and the type which comes before our vision when we say--radical--is that of the superficial doctrinaire, the irresponsible social agitator, the long-haired type of fanatical reformer with an easy panacea for all social ills and international maladies and disorders. Masonry seems to have few of that type of radicals, and in this sense it is a kind of misnomer to use the term 'radical Freemasonry.' This is not to say, however, that there are many who seem to us to have overstepped the bounds of a wholesale and radical conservatism The whole point and purpose of this brief essay is to make clear that there is precisely this reality at the heart of Freemasonry, as we have this year and last year observed it throughout the world--a wholesome and radical conservatism. Several Grand Jurisdictions, which have our fraternal respect veneration and cordial good-will, incline in the matter of legislation, attitude and interpretation, rather too much toward the untried and even positively dangerous, while others no less devoted to the ideal and progress of the Fraternity veer the other way, toward the old and tested and tried principles and ancient landmarks of the Order. Maine would unquestionably belong to the latter class. It would be both invidious and fraternally ungracious to point out examples of the former. It may well be that those who are inclined toward the untried and dangerous will keep the conservative from crystallizing and becoming moribund and pull them ahead, while on the other hand, the old fogyism of the Masonic mossbacks (the alleged conservatives) may exert their influence in a no less wholesome way in holding the aggressively dangerous (the alleged radicals) from going too far away from the well-tried landmarks. In short, they may accomplish in this union, jarring as it often is what neither alone would do so well."

 

----o----

 

Sacred Asylum

 

BY BRO. JOSEPH ROBBINS, Illinois

 

Sacred Asylum! here we meet And tell our vows at Friendship's shrine Father! guide Thou our wandering feet, And make the hearts before Thee Thine.

 

Beneath the bannered Cross we stand From worldly noise and strife apart, And, trusting, grasp the offered hand, That holds within its palm the heart.

 

From off our pilgrim sandals brush The dust of busy, toiling day And here, in evening's quiet hush, Bending before the Master, pray--

 

That in our hearts, without alloy May dwell the love that Christ hath shown, Responsive to a Brother's joy, And making all his griefs our own.

 

With firm reliance on Thy name, May we the path of duty tread O'er frozen ways, or through the flame, Whence Molay's martyr-spirit fled.

 

And when, at last, this mortal dust Shall put on Immortality; O, grant us then serenest trust In Thine unending verity.

 

----o----

 

 

STUDIES OF MASONRY IN THE UNTED STATES

BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, EDITOR

PART V. FIRST GRAND LODGES IN PENNSYLVANIA

 

AS already stated on page 314 of THE BUILDER for October, the Grand Lodge of England adopted in 1721 a regulation to the effect that no lodge could come into existence as duly and regularly constituted without a warrant from the Grand Master. This new law came into effect gradually. Such lodges as had existed from time immemorial, or as had been organized since 1717 and could show otherwise a clean bill of health were accepted as legitimate or duly regularized.

 

"It is evident," writes Gould, in his History, Vol. IV (American edition), p. 240, "that brethren who had left the old world, and brought to their new homes a knowledge of the Craft, were as much within their rights in holding Lodges in Philadelphia, Portsmouth (New Hampshire), and elsewhere in America, as those who assembled in like manner in England and Scotland.... The Fraternity there in Philadelphia must be held to have been as much and as legally a Grand Lodge as that of 'All England at York.' "

 

As also previously noted, the old St. John's Lodge at Philadelphia functioned at one and the same time as a "private" lodge and as a Grand Lodge. The records of this lodge, as given in Liber B, go back to February, 1731 (New Style), at about which time, so it is believed, it first perfected a formal organization, with William Button as Master. When Button left for Newfoundland William Allen was elected to take his place. On June 24, the brethren assembled as a Grand Lodge, and Allen was made Grand Master. It should be understood that this was a "Grand Lodge" according to the ancient customs, and not in the sense now used; this means that "Grand Lodge" was a general assembly of the brethren and that all Masons were permitted attendance, wherever their membership might be; it is probable that the officers were more or less nominal, and acted as such only at the feast on St. John's Day.

 

The Grand Lodge thus working according to the ancient style was evidently not very powerful. Until 1757 it never had (so far as we know) more than three lodges on its roster; and the fourth lodge, organized under its authority in that year, later withdrew its allegiance, under circumstances to be described. Its membership was drawn from a restricted class, and the interest of these men appears to have waxed and waned with circumstances, as during the anti-Masonic flurry of 1737 in William Plumstead's Grand Mastership. During a period of fourteen years no notice of the Craft had appeared in a Franklin's Gazette; perhaps it was because the brethren preferred no publicity; but it may be also that interest had lapsed. If such was the case it took on a new lease of life in 1752, for in March of that year a movement was put under way by the Grand Lodge and the First Lodge to erect a Freemason's Hall to be used exclusively by the brethren. On March 13, 1754, a subscription list was passed around "with gratifying results", except that the lodge which met at Tun Tavern held out for a time, though it joined the enterprise later. A three-story brick building was erected on what is now Sansom Street, Philadelphia; in this the brethren assembled until 1782, some of the rooms meanwhile being used for general public purposes, as when in 1777 a number of Quakers were incarcerated in it on suspicion of Royalist sympathies. It was popularly known as "Mason's Lodge" and was the first specifically Masonic building to be erected in the Colonies.

 

GRAND LODGE DECAYED

 

But alas ! As the Revolution approached the original Grand Lodge and its subordinates became stricken with decay; to some extent, no doubt, because so many of their members were on the Royalist side, and because so much of their life was transfused into the veins of a new set of lodges working under the Ancient Grand Lodge of England, of which more anon. The last official meeting of the brethren in Mason's Lodge was on Feb. 25, 1782. The title of the building had been vested in the trustees of the three lodges; the survivors, Bros. Shippen and Swift, were empowered by the Assembly to sell the property in 1785; two-thirds of the money realized was returned to individual Masons; the other third went to the First Lodge and by it was turned over, 500 pounds, to the City Corporation for charitable purposes.

 

Of the various Grand Masters of this first Grand Lodge the most important was, next to Franklin, William Allen, closely associated with Franklin through a long course of years. He was a Philadelphian by birth, born there Aug. 5, 1704. After studying law at the Temple in London he returned to practice in the city and was soon one of its prominent leaders. He purchased the lots on which Independence Hall was built in his own name and paid for them with his own money; and while mayor opened that historic building with a banquet, as we may learn from Franklin's Gazette under date of Sept. 30, 1736. He served as member of the Assembly and in 1750 was made Chief Justice of the Province. Being, like so many of his friends, a confirmed Royalist, he returned to England at the advent of the Revolution and while there published a book to show how England might retain the Colonies. He returned to Philadelphia after the war and died there Sept. 6, 1780. According to Libel B he must have been Grand Master in 1731, because he is thus referred to under date of June 24 of that year; we know of a certainty that he was Grand Master in the following year, and that he appointed Franklin his Deputy. In 1750 he was appointed Provincial Grand Master of Pennsylvania by Lord Byron, Grand Master of England.

 

Of Humphrey Morrey (or Murray), elected Grand Master June 28, 1733, less is known. He was a merchant of old Quaker stock, and evidently related to prominent Philadelphia families. He died in August, 1735. Franklin succeeded him in office and by virtue of a deputation from Henry Price, already referred to, figured as "Provincial Grand Master for the Province of Pennsylvania." After Franklin came James Hamilton, elected Grand Master July 3, 1735, born in Philadelphia in 1710, later residing at Lancaster for a while, in which town he lived during his incumbency. Hamilton was a brother-in-law of William Allen. In 1745 he was Mayor of Philadelphia, and in 1748 was commissioned Lieutenant Governor of the Province. His death occurred in New York, Aug. 14, 1783.

 

THOMAS HOPKINSON WAS ELECTED

 

On July 8, 1736, the Grand Lodge elected Thomas Hopkinson to succeed Hamilton. Hopkinson was born in London, April 6, 1709, studied law, and, after coming to Philadelphia, soon forged to the front, becoming a member of the Provincial Council, first president of the American Philosophical Society, and the incumbent of other positions equally important; he was the father of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; his grandson, Joseph. Hopkinson, was the author of "Hail Columbia." He died Nov. 5, 1751. The anti-Masonic scare, occasioned by a catastrophe incident to a mock initiation, came at the end of his administration; he issued a statement to the public in order to clear the Fraternity of any guilt in this most unfortunate occurrence and ridiculous misadventure. The Grand Master for 1737/8 was also prominent in the larger affairs of the city. William Plumstead (or Plumbstead) was born in Philadelphia Nov. 7, 1708. He held many offices of public trust, being Mayor in 1754, and was active in Masonic circles. Benjamin Franklin appointed him Grand Treasurer in 1749; and he was one of the Committee elected to build the "Mason's Lodge." His death occurred in Philadelphia, Aug. 10, 1765. Plumstead was succeeded by Joseph Shippen, Jr., born Nov. 28, 1706, a grandson of the first Mayor of Philadelphia under Penn's charter. It was his misfortune to reach the Grand Mastership in June, 1738, at the time when the anti-Masonic crusade was so strong that the Craft apparently lapsed into more or less inactivity. One of his Grand Wardens was Dr. Thomas Cadwallader, associated with the Bell Letter episode. He was made Senior Grand Warden under Franklin in 1749 at the first Grand Lodge held under the Oxnard warrant. Shippen died at eightyseven years of age.

 

These thumbnail sketches of the early Grand Masters, included here to show what manner of men governed the Philadelphia Craft in its early years, are given as being typical of the brethren who worked in, or under, the first Grand Lodge; they were, many of them, prominent in public affairs, belonged to the "best families" and moved in exclusive circles; and it is probable that all the lodges then in activity were similarly recruited from the same social strata. Bro. Sachse believes it was because of this fact that a great transformation was worked in Philadelphia Masonry, beginning about 1758, which it is now in order to describe.

 

"ANCIENT" MASONRY APPEARED ON THE SCENE

 

The reader will recall that in 1751 a new Grand Lodge sprang up in England as a rival to the original Grand Lodge organized in 1717. (See The Study Club, April, 1924, page 111.) The brethren behind the Grand Lodge of 1751 believed themselves to adhere more closely to the old working and regulations and therefore fell into the habit of dubbing themselves "Ancients"; the older Body they nicknamed "Moderns" it is most probable, as Henry Sadler has abundantly shown, that a social cleavage was also party responsible for this "schism," as Gould and others have not very happily described it, for the Ancients were made up, for the most part and at least in the beginnings, of Masons drawn from among workmen, many of them from Ireland; Laurence Dermott, their creative genius, was an Irish painter, and their Grand Lodge was organized to follow closely the pattern of the Irish Grand Lodge.

 

In the middle of the eighteenth century Philadelphia was an important port to which came many seafaring men, along with laborers of all description; it was most natural for men of these classes, not in sympathy with the social exclusiveness of the "Modern" lodges, to prefer lodges under "Ancient" warrants. Furthermore, many of the brethren who migrated into Pennsylvania and its sister colonies were members of, or had been made Masons in, military lodges; and since it was the Ancient Grand Lodge and the Grand Lodge of Ireland that had discovered the device of issuing ambulatory warrants for lodges in the armies and navies, it naturally followed that these Masons newly come to Philadelphia were predisposed to favor the Ancient working.

 

Owing to these causes, and to the fact already mentioned that many of the leading "Moderns" of the city were Royalist in their sympathies, Modern Masonry gradually passed into the background so that by 1793 it had become entirely replaced by its rival. Under the original Grand Lodge there had been, until the middle of the century, three "subordinate lodges"--St. John's, warranted in 1731 or previously; Lodge No. 2, warranted by Franklin in 1749; and Lodge No. 3, warranted some time before 1749. In 1757, probably to meet the changed social conditions in the city, Lodge No. 4 was added to the list, opened in due form on July 2 of that year. It was in this last named lodge that the first definite defection appeared. A committee from Lodges Nos. 1 and 2 accused its W. M. and two of his officers with being "Ancients"; this they did not deny. In the following January they showed their determination to remain Ancients by calling together a committee for the purpose of petitioning the Ancient Grand Lodge of England for a warrant. Such a warrant was issued (Blessington was Grand Master) under date of June 7, 1758, was given the number 1; and was listed on the Ancient Grand Lodge list as No. 69. Following the precedent set by the Ancient Grand Lodge and the Grand Lodge of Ireland, this lodge vacated the number 1 position, and took for itself number 2, probably leaving the first number open for a Provincial Grand Lodge to be organized later. It began work under the new warrant, received in January, 1759, with forty members, and chose for itself the official name of "Lodge No. 1 of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons in the City of Philadelphia, and Province of Pennsylvania." During the year this lodge divided itself into two sections, under two sets of officers, except for the treasurer, and met on different nights---a strange procedure not now possible to explain.

 

These brethren determined to form a Provincial Grand Lodge. On Feb. 13, 1760, they elected William Ball to be their first Grand Master, and on the following day asked Grand Lodge at London to issue them a warrant therefor. This request was complied with in the course of time, and Grand Lodge issued a warrant July 15, 1761. The Philadelphia brethren learned of this but, for some reason, the document failed to arrive. A second warrant was issued but it also became lost. A third was made under date of June 20, 1764, and this time reached Philadelphia safely in 1764. William Ball was installed as Provincial Grand Master with solemn ceremony Feb. 2, 1764.

 

One of the first official acts of this new Grand Body was to issue a warrant for the formation of Lodge No. 3, composed of members drawn from Lodge No. 2. In the following year Grand Lodge warranted a lodge in Cantwell's Bridge, Delaware, and later, lodges in Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, etc. It met with the difficulties usually incidental to new organizations, but these it surmounted, and in the course of time it solidly established itself as one of the Mother Grand Lodges of this country. The Revolution caused it to sever its official relations with the English parent body, and in 1786 it was dissolved, and a new Grand Lodge organized in its place, as remains to be described in later chapters; the present Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania dates without break in continuity from that year.

 

Of the persons prominent in this Ancient Grand Lodge Bro. William Ball was easily first. He was raised in Lodge No. 2 under the original Grand Lodge in March 1750/1. He was again raised in the "Ancient way" in 1759 or 1760, but retained his membership in his mother lodge until 1763. As Provincial Grand Master he served continuously from 1761 to 1781, and then again, after Grand Lodge became independent from England, for the year 1795. He was born on his father's estate, now included within the city of Philadelphia, Oct. 6, 1729. He learned the goldsmith trade, and probably followed it in Philadelphia; but retired in middle life as one of the richest men in the Colony. He died May 30, 1810, and was buried with Masonic honors.

 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

 

On the general field covered by this article the most important literary source is Freemasonry in Pennsylvania 1727-1907, Barratt and Sachse; Philadelphia; 1908, Vol. I. Of almost equal importance is Old Masonic Lodges of Pennsylvania "Moderns and Ancients" 1730-1801, Julius F. Sachse- Philadelphia; 1912- Vol. I. See also the following: History of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons, Stillson, Hughan, etc.; Boston and New York ; 1891. History of Freemasonry in Rhode Island, Henry W. Rugg; Providence; 1895. History of Freemasonry, Robert Freke Gould; Cincinnati and Chicago; Vol. IV. History of Freemasonry in Canada John Ross Robertson; Toronto; 1900, Vol. I. History of Freemasonry in Maryland, Edward T. Schultz; Baltimore; 1844, Vol. I. Freemasonry in Michigan, Jefferson S. Conover; Coldwater; 1897, Vol. I. Mackey's Revised History of Freemasonry Robert I. Clegg; Chicago; 1921. Beginnings of Freemasonry in America, Melvin M. Johnson; New York; 1924. Benjamin Franklin as a Free Mason, Julius F. Sachse; Philadelphia 1906. History of Freemasonry in the State of New York Ossian Lang; New York; 1922. History of the Most Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons in New York from the Earliest Date, Charles T. McClenachan; New York; 1888, Vol. I. History of Lodge No. 61, F. & A. M., Wilkesharre, Pennsylvania, Oscar Jewell Harvey; Wilkesbarre; 1897. Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. III, page 124- Vol. XVII, page 137- Vol. XXVIII, page 270; Vol. XXIX, page 308. Origin of Masonry in the State of New Jersey, and the Entire Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, from Its First Organization, A. L. 5786, Joseph H. Hough; Trenton; 1870. Concise History of Freemasonry, Robert Freke Gould; New York; 1924. Militaiy Lodges, Robert Freke Gould; London; 1899. In above references consult index.

 

On early Pennsylvania worthies in addition to above see the following on William Allen:--Pennsylvania: A Primer, Barr Ferree; New York; 1914, page 84. An Historical Account of the Old State House of Pennsylvania, Frank M. Etting; Philadelphia; 1891, pages 12, 24, 35, 52, 58, 122, 132, 136, 147, 151. Pennsylvania Archives, Samuel Hazard; Philadelphia; 1852, page 362. James Hamilton:-- Pennsylvania: A Primer, Barr Ferree; New York; 1914, pages 135, 140, 141. An Historical Account of the Old State House of Pennsylvania, Frank M. Etting; Philadelphia; 1891, pages 16, 18, 25, 34, 39, 122, 136. Humphrey Morrey:--Pennsylvania: A Primer, Barr Ferree; New York; 1914, page 37. Thos. Hopkinson:--An Historical Account of the Old State House of Pennsylvania, Frank M. Etting; Philadelphia; 1891 pages 25, 126. Wm. Plumstead:-- An Historical Account of the Old State House of Pennsylvania Frank M. Etting; Philadelphia; 1891, pages 35, 151. Benjamin Franklin:-- Pennsylvania: A Primer, Barr Ferree; New York 1914, pages 79, 84, 111, 113, 139, 141, 142, 145, 163, 170, 174, 214, 227, 229, 234, 235, 236, 241. An Historical Account of thc Old State House of Pennsylvania, Frank M. Etting; Philadelphia; 1891, pages 16, 25, 33, 38, 40, 41-44, 49, 53, 65, 81, 85-87 94, 97, 101, 106 109, 118, 119, 124-126, 154. Pennsylvania Archives, Samuel Hazard; Philadelphia; 1852, pages 294, 295 297, 309, 274, 344, 467, 548, 766, 420. Joseph Shippen:--Pennsylvania Archives, Samuel Hazard; Philadelphia; 1852, pages 622, 636. An Historical Account of the Old State House of Pennsylvania, Frank M. Etting; Philadelphia; 1891, pages 7, 65. Much light is thrown on the Shippen family by a volume of correspondence entitled Letters and Papers Relating Chiefly to the Provincial History of Pennsylvania, edited by Thomas Balch; Philadelphia; 1855.

 

On the general field see THE BUILDER: 1916, page 230; 1917, page 254; 1918, pages 165, 168; 1919, pages 35, 155.

 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

 

What was the regulation adopted in 1721? When was it enforced in the American Colonies? In what sense was St. John's Lodge a Grand Lodge? Who was its first Grand Master? What was the first Masonic building erected in this country? When and by whom was it built? How was it disposed of?

 

Give a brief sketch of the career of William Allen. Of Thomas Morrey. Of James Hamilton. Of Thomas Hopkinson. Of William Plumstead. Of Joseph Shippen. To what social class did these brethren belong? What eflfect did this have on the future of Philadelphia Masonry?

 

Give sketch of the Ancient Grand Lodge. When was the first Grand Lodge organized? Why did the Grand Lodge of 1751 come into existence?

 

How did Ancient Freemasonry come to be established in Pennsylvania? Tell what you know about Lodge No. 4. Why did it secede from the original Grand Lodge? How did it secure its warrant? Tell how the Ancient Provincial Grand Lodge was organized in Philadelphia. Who was its first Grand Master? In what states did it warrant lodges? Give a sketch of William Ball. What light does the history of Pennsylvania Masonry throw on Masonry of today? How many Grand Lodges use the word "Ancient" in their title? Do you know what influence Pennsylvania Ancient Masonry had on the American Ritual?

 

HOW TO ORGANIZE A STUDY CLUB

 

A pamphlet on "How to Organize and Maintain a Study Club" will be furnished free to those asking for it in any quantities up to fifty or one hundred. For further information address the National Masonic Research Society, 1950 Railway Exchange, St. Louis, Mo. The Society answers questions lends books, clippings, etc., free of charge to clubs. Text books recommended are "Symbolical Masonry" and "Great Teachings of Masonry," both by H.L,. Haywood, the former of which should be used in beginning.

 

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Great Men Who Were Masons

 

Dr. James Milnor

 

By BRO. GEORGE W. BAIRD, P. G. M., District of Columbia

 

AMONG the notable Grand Masters of Pennsylvania in the early part of last century Bro. Dr. James Milnor held a distinguished position, alike for his magnificent character -  he was in many ways, in appearance and spirit, very much like Phillips Brooks - and his unusual abilities. He had been made a Mason, in the twenty-second year of his age, at Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the old Lodge No. 31 of that town; this was in August, 1795. In the following year he transferred his membership to Lodge No. 3 in Philadelphia. During 1798‑9‑1800 he held the office of Senior Grand Warden; in 1801 and in 1803 he was Deputy Grand Master; in 1805 he was elected Grand Master and held that office to and including 1813, the longest term held by any Grand Master in the history of the present Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.

 

Dr. Milnor was born in Philadelphia June 20, 1773, of Quaker parentage. After a public school course and graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, he took up the study of law, and was admitted to the bar when only twenty‑one years of age. He practiced first in Norristown, and later opened an office in Philadelphia. He fell into difficulties with his Quaker brethren when his marriage was solemnized by an Episcopalian clergyman.

 

In a few years he arose to a position of prominence in Philadelphia. After serving as a member of the city council from 1805 to 1809 he was elected to Congress, in which he held a seat until 1813. It was during his political career that he began to experience a call to enter the Episcopalian ministry. After serving as assistant minister in the Associated Churches in Philadelphia he accepted an invitation to the rectorship of St. George's Church, New York City. This was in 1816. As a Christian minister he prominently identified himself with the Bible Society, the American Tract Society, and many important charities. In 1830 he went to England as a delegate of the American Bible Society, and while abroad traveled in France, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

 

Grand Master Milnor possessed a charming manner, a wonderful control of language and it is said was one of the gentlest leaders imaginable, an ideal Grand Master, one would say. He was a leader of men, not a driver. His religion was sincere, earnest and fervent. His portrait shows a benign handsome face. He was a prolific writer, always on religious or moral subjects: he published "An Oration on Masonry" delivered before the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1811; "A Plea for the American Colonization Society" in 1826; "A Sermon on the Death of De Witt Clinton" in 1828, etc.

 

He died in New York City April 8, 1845. His funeral at St. George's Church was attended by an immense throng. Of his memorial his biographer, Mr. John S. Stone, says:

 

"His remains repose beneath the chapel floor, from which he so often delighted to dispense the symbols of his Savior's love; while, in the recess on the body of the base rises a beautiful marble bust which, by its faithful likeness, speaks continually of the long lived feelings of love and emotion."

 

The interest Grand Master Milnor took in disseminating the Holy Scriptures, that book of the law and the testimony so revered by Masons, endears him to us all. Perhaps he builded more wisely than he knew; for that book, the rule and guide of a Mason's faith, has had much to do with the preservation of our inherent rights.

 

Nevertheless he was not a zealot, and did not fear that some breath of adverse wind would over‑turn the ship of truth. During the height of the anti‑Masonic craze, when some of the best heads inside and out the Craft became very much be‑addled, and when Christian ministers led in a most unchristian attack on Freemasonry, Dr. Milnor remained as steadfast as a rock. A country clergyman asked of him if it would be wise for him (the country clergyman) to withdraw from the Order out of deference to popular clamor. Dr. Milnor's reply has been preserved for us by Sidney Haydon:

 

"Do you wish to renounce Masonry ?" asked Dr. Milnor.

 

"No," was the reply, "I love Masonry too well."

 

"Then do as I do," was the rejoinder. "Put down your foot firmly, and say, 'I am a Mason, and am proud of it!' and if anyone asks you what Masonry consists in, tell them 'Love to God, and good‑will to man !' "

 

The whole man revealed himself in that reply! It was such men as he that built the ever enduring structure of the Craft in these states!

 

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EDITORIAL

 

BOARD OF EDITORS

Editor‑in‑Chief - H.L. HAYWOOD

 

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

 

LOUIS BLOCK, Iowa

ROBERT L. CLEGG, Ohio

GILBERT W. DAYNES, England

RAY V. DENSLOW, Missouri

GEORGE H. DERN, Utah

N.W.J. HAYDON, Canada

C, C. HUNT, Iowa

CHARLES F. IRWIN. Ohio

A.L. KRESS, Pennsylvania

R. J. MEEKREN, Canada

JOSEPH E. MORCOMBE, California

JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, New York

ARTHUR C. PARKER, New York

JESSE M. WHITED, California

DAVID E. W. WILLIAMSON, Nevada

 

To the Members of the National Masonic Research Society:

 

Notice Is hereby given that on Monday, Feb. 2, 1925, a meeting of the National Masonic Research Society Jill be held at the Iowa Masonic Library, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 7:30 p.m.

 

This is an adjournment of the Annual Meeting of Oct. 2, 1924, and the annual report of the officers and election of members of the Board of Stewards will take place.

 

The members of the Board of Stewards whose terms expire are:

 

N. R. Parvin, Grand Secretary, Iowa,

W. F. Kuhn, deceased,

Jos. Fort Newton, New York City,

Jesse M. Whited, California,

Oliver Day Street, Alabama.

 

Notice all also given that there will be presented for adoption an amendment to Article XI, Section 1, of the By‑laws, changing the date of the annual meeting of the Society from the fret Thursday of October "to the first Monday of February in each year."

 

Ernest A. Reed, President.

C. C. Hunt, Secretary.

 

* * *

 

ETERNAL LIFE NOW

 

BERNARD drew his hood down over his eyes while passing Lake Lucerne. He did not deem beauty a sin, but believed the enjoyment of loveliness should be postponed until after death. Some who scoff at this old saint because of his superstition may, if they examine their own minds as carefully as did he, discover themselves to be thinking in the same way - or shall one say, not thinking! Such men somehow believe that the solutions of our human problems will be found out in some distant time, where or when they know not. They live now without much happiness, without much success, with little knowledge, because they assume that the inner nature and explanation of things has been indefinitely reserved. They cease trying to develop themselves because they believe it of no use, thinking that, once death is behind them, such things will be granted them by a sudden revelation. Or they believe that the true knowledge of things is somehow hidden behind a veil, hung at the back of the. sky, accessible only to elect souls. This is a trick the human mind plays on itself, out of its habit of expectancy and its vice of postponement. All that exists, from the height of it to the bottom, and in all its breadth, is as eligible to us now as ever it can be. They who have found this out sometimes describe themselves as living the eternal life in the midst of time.

 

* * *

 

MARK TWAIN'S PESSIMISM

 

FOR all his wit, his humor, his abundant humanity, Mark Twain was exceedingly unhappy. This was made evident throughout the latter portions of Albert Bigelow Paine's Mark Twain: A Biography (published by Harpers'), than which it would be difficult to recall a biography in which the subject himself is more tangibly present. In the Autobiography, edited by Mr. Paine, recently published by Harpers', this misery of soul is rendered more evident still, and in such manner as makes clear what were the causes of it. Mark Twain was an atheist. It became impossible for him after reaching maturity to believe or think that a Being exists that can be described as God in any sense of that name, or that human life itself is such as makes that faith possible. This incalculable misfortune came at last to take possession of his whole mind; no doubt he did not wilfully contrive to have it so, but it became so, and that because of certain deeds, or habits of thought, some of which may be traced to his early days. It made a pessimist of him in the absolute sense of the word, and contributed to all his humor a flavor of bitterness more easily felt than defined.

 

He had too much honor and candor of mind to have any desire to conceal all this from the world, though it was doubtless responsible for his leaving some books to be published after his death. In his Autobiography he interrupts his long and loving account of the life of his daughter Susy to pen a diatribe against the whole scheme of existence, as bitter as any uttered by Schopenhauer or Dean Swift. It will sound almost blasphemous to many ears:

 

"A myriad of men are born; they labor, sweat and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities; those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care and misery grows heavier year by year; at length ambition is dead, pride is dead, vanity is dead; longing for release comes in their place. It comes at last - the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them, and they vanish from the world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they left no sign that they existed - a world which will lament them for a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did, and goes along the same profitless road, and vanishes as they vanished - to make room for another, and another, and a million other myriads, to follow the same arid path through the same desert and to accomplish what the first myriad, and all the myriads that came after it, accomplished - nothing!"

 

This agonized utterance shows what atheism is made of. It is a complete misreading of plain facts, to which beliefs and unbeliefs are only incidental. The paragraph quoted makes that clear. "A myriad men are born." In saying this he doubtless had in mind such creatures as gnats and flies; it was a favorite idea of his; but men are not creatures, or such things as gnats and flies, nor are they born in myriads. "They labor, sweat and struggle for bread." This is a wilful exaggeration, due to an ill‑regulated habit of mind; men do labor, sweat and struggle because they enjoy to do so, as did Mark Twain himself; but their lives are not wholly made up of such strivings, and there are countless goods for which they labor other than for bread. "They squabble and scold and fight." Some of them do, all of them do at times, but if they do it is because they choose to, not because the universe forces them. "They scramble for little mean advantages over each other." If Mark Twain did such things himself he made a mistake; there was no power outside himself compelling him to. If he attributed his own weakness, failure and hopelessness to the whole scheme of things, that also was a blunder.

 

All this does not lessen the nation's admiring regard for the man or spoil its enjoyment of his rugged books, our legacy from his genius, in which, with a humor as wholesome as the sunlight and a humanity as strong and tender as father love, he lets us know what manner of man he really was, and what, with his misinterpretations out of mind, he knew human life to be. It was his own private misfortune that he did not understand his nature better than he did, of what there was in himself of greatness and power that should have made any form of atheism impossible. It is sad that one so noble should have suffered so deeply when no such suffering was necessary.

 

This subject of atheism has long been held of primary importance in Freemasonry; it is dealt with in the Constitutions, has its place among the landmarks, and is to day the determining factor in all attempts to bring into fraternal union with American Grand Lodges those of other countries that at this point have lost their way. No atheist is eligible to membership in the Craft. There is no just or conceivable way in which he could be made eligible; all the realities of the case render it impossible. Every human being is perfectly equipped to live in this world with happiness and satisfaction. There is no. horrible mystery, like some lowering monster, hidden away behind the scenes. This world is not a vale of illusion, nor is man an orphaned child wandering helplessly in bewildering shadows. Birth is not a thing that can be despised, death is a thing that need not be feared. There is THAT at the basis of all things which renders pessimism a vain and useless error. The knowledge of these facts, the habits of thought and life developed out of them is indicated in Freemasonry by faith in the Sovereign Grand Architect of the Universe, a Builder that leaves no Temple incomplete. All that Masonry is or does comes by inevitable logic out of such a wisdom, stands in the light of it, moves by the power of it. Naturally the man who does not so think and work cannot be at home in the lodge, because his whole manner of thinking is necessarily incompatible with that human wisdom which it is the lodge's mission to teach.

 

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THE LIBRARY

 

AN OLD BOOK ON SYMBOLISM

 

ANCIENT PAGAN AND MODERN CHRISTIAN SYMBOLISM. By Thomas Inman. Published by Eckler. For sale by National Masonic Research Society Book Department. Fourth Edition. Cloth, 200 illustrations, index, 147 pages. Price, post paid, ';1.60.

 

A SYMBOL is a conventional device intended to suggest some idea. If it stands for no idea the devise is an emblem, such as a nation's flag, which means one thing under one governmental regime, something else under another; or it is merely an ornamental figure such as printers use "to dress up a page," or architects sometimes employ, often for no "reason" at all. The devices employed by Freemasonry have the specific purpose of suggesting ideas, and all of these ideas together comprise the "system of Masonic teaching." Thus the "square" in Masonry is a symbol intended to suggest the idea of dealing "squarely" with one's fellows; the "compasses" are intended to stand for the idea that one must preserve his moral nature intact, so that no unruly passions will disrupt it. The thing that makes these symbols "Masonic" is the feet that they stand for ideas Freemasonry desires to teach to its members. The display of them in a lodge room serves to keep every brother in remembrance of all the Masonic ideals; it is as if the lodge said to him, "I cannot always be teaching these things with spoken or written language, therefore I say them by means of these symbols."

 

Symbols have been in universal use. Many of those employed by the Craft are being used, or have hitherto been used, for all manner of purposes by all manner of organizations: the All-Seeing‑Eye, the Swastika, the Circle, Triangle, Cross and scores beside. In each instance Masonry uses them for its own purposes, endows them with its own meanings, interprets them in its own way. To a Mason it matters very little for what purpose a symbol has been used outside the Craft; its Masonic meaning is that which the Craft intends it to have. For these reasons it is always futile to attempt to lug into the Masonic system the interpretation of a symbol borrowed from some nonMasonic source, Masonry is not a savage cult, an "Ancient Mystery," an Egyptian religion, an occult secrecy; it is Masonry.

 

Nevertheless a student of Masonic symbols often finds it of great value to know how these same symbols, or others similar to them, have been used by groups other than Masonic. For such a purpose Thomas Inman's Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism contains certain virtues that recommend it. In some ways it is not a pleasant book to read. The author appears to have been rabidly opposed to Christianity, at least in its orthodox forms, so that one detects a bias in much that he says. The book is old, the first edition having been published in 1869, and much water has gone under the mill since that time. The present edition has evidently been printed from plates used before; the illustrations are stiff old‑fashioned line drawings. These facts, along with a certain emphasis on sex worship that must be distasteful to some readers, tell against it.

 

However one can make allowances for such things and yet find much remaining of singular value. The author's method is to write a section or chapter to explain each picture. His explanation of a symbolical drawing of the Virgin and Child is typical:

 

"In a copy of a medieval Virgin and Child, as painted in Della Robbia ware in the South Kensington Museum, a copy of which was given to me by my friend, Mr. Newton, to whose kindness I am indebted for many illustrations of ancient Christian art. It represents the Virgin and Child precisely as she used to be represented in Egypt, in India, in Assyria, Babylonia, Phoenicia and Etruria; the accident of dress being of no mythological consequence. In the framework around the group, we recognize the triformed leaf, emblematic of Asher; the grapes, typical of Dionysos; the wheat ears, symbolic of Ceres, l'abricot fendu, the mark of womankind, and the pomegranate rimmon, which characteries the teeming mother. The living group, moreover, are placed in an archway, delta, or door, which is symbolic of the female, like the vesica piscis, the oval or the circle. This door is, moreover, surmounted by what appear to be snails whose supposed virtue we have spoken of under Plate I. This identification of Mary with the Sacti is strong; by‑and‑by we shall see that it is as complete as it is possible to be made.

 

Among the symbols thus treated are a number of especial interest to Masons: Adonis, Ahriman, Aleph, altar, anchor, arcane, architecture, ark, atheists, boundary stones (landmarks), box, candlestick, Ceres, circles, coins, crescent, cross, crux ansata, David and ark, delta, dualism in nature, east, Egyptian crosses, emblems, esoteric, feet, fetish, fire, five, four, Gnostics, goat, hammer, hand, Hiram, Masonic, Mason's Marks, etc., etc.

 

* * *

 

ASHMOLE: FREEMASON, OCCULTIST, ANTIQUARIAN

 

ELIAS ASHMOLE: FOUNDER OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD. By Dudley Wright. Published by The London Freemason. May be purchased through National Masonic Research Society Book Department, 1950 Railway Exchange, St. Louis, Mo. Paper, 35 pages. Price, postpaid, forty cents.

 

BRO. DUDLEY WRIGHT has once again placed us all under obligation to his tireless pen. If his latest volume is not equal in bulk to its predecessors it suffers nothing from the fact, either in value or interest, for it tells us all we need to know about its subject and that is sufficient.

 

Ashmole, to use an American cant expression of the day, "intrigues" us. He himself tells us in his famous Diary that on Oct. 16, 1645, he was "made a Free Mason at Warrington." In the same private record he says that on March 10, 1682, he "rec'd a Summons to appear at a Lodge to be held the next day at Masons' Hall." From these data questions arise. Ashmole was not an Operative Mason; what led him to unite with the Order ? What influence did he have on Masonry, if any, between 1645 and 1682 ? Was the lodge he visited at London the mysterious "Accepcon" of the Masons' Company of which Edward Conder has given us a history in his Hole Crafte' Bro. Wright has crowded into six pages such known facts about Ashmole and the lodges of his day as help to answer these questions.

 

These questions lead to another. In the Masonic Ritual there are a number of elements undeniably occult. Ashmole himself was an occultist, more particularly an alchemist, and acquainted with Moore, Lilly, Booker, Wharton and Dr. Fludd; could he himself have grafted into the rites of the old builders the "golden bough" of hermetism ? Some have believed this, at least in part, as did George Fort and Albert Pike; others have suggested its possibility, as did Bro. A. E. Waite. In any event an examination of Ashmole's Masonic connections opens the question of Masonic occultism. It is a fascinating question, even if difficult or impossible to answer in the present state of knowledge.

 

Occultism in Masonry is a fact. Wherever the occult elements originated, from whatever source they derived - gnosticism, alchemy, rosicrucianism, kabbalism - however they are to be interpreted, they are in the ritual, a challenge to the Masonic student. And as far as that it concerned, and more especially in this land, there is a vast deal of occultism still alive outside Freemasonry, multitudes of individuals continue to believe in omens, signs, horoscopes, dreams, mystic numbers, and all that, and possess the same right to such beliefs as any others.

 

Occultism was the "science" of an earlier day, a matter of searching out the same kind of facts for which the modern sciences are seeking; a method for employing actual forces for practical purposes. In this it differed from mysticism, which was religious rather than scientific in its nature, and sought its ends in character and worship, although many men were occultists and mystics at the same time. A few of our sciences sprang from occultism - astronomy came from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, and physics, botany, anatomy were full of occultism in the beginning. The elimination of occultism from such sciences came as the result of an exceedingly slow process; even so late as 1646 when Sir Thomas Browne, an alumnus of the best European universities of his time, wrote his Vulgar Errors as a blast against occultism in science his own mind was itself so steeped in it that his very arguments were themselves based on occultistic premises.

 

The occultist of the present day feels that he has an ancient and respectable tradition behind him. He believes that facts not known to the modern sciences may be found in old books; that there are forces in nature not yet discovered by present day chemists and physicists; and that he has methods for employing them in behalf of practical purposes known only to those initiated in secret philosophies. Such men are as sincere and as intelligent as any others, and their views are deserving of the same respect.

 

If this account of the ease be true it may suggest to us how to make the right approach to the understanding of the occultist elements in our Craft. The Masonic occultist is entitled to his own day in court, deserving of all the courtesies, with a right to state his own ease in his own way; there is no just way of ruling him out of order; and as for those who may deride him as a fool or a charlatan he has his own to quote ready to hand; he knows as well as anybody that men who live in glass houses should not heave bricks about.

 

On the other hand those of us who may not be Masonic occultists have the same rights in the ease. If the occultist makes statements, we can ask him for his facts, authorities and credentials; if he challenges our beliefs, we have a right to challenge his; if he believes himself entitled to his own theory of Freemasonry, we have the same privilege; if he betrays a leek of logic in his arguments we have the right to point them out; and he has no more license to try to force his beliefs on the Craft, than have those who hold otherwise. In short, occultism need not be made a matter for controversy, as is often unhappily the ease; it is a question of fact, and all our prejudices and emotions are worse than useless while we are attempting to deal with such a thing.

 

* * *

 

FOR THE STUDENT OF THINGS EGYPTIAN

 

FIRST STEPS IN EGYPTIAN. By Sir E. A. Wallis Budge. AMENISM‑ATENISM AND EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM. WITH HIEROGLYPHIC TEXTS OF HYMNS OF AMEN AND ATEN AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION. By Sir E. A. Wallis Budge. Both books may be purchased through the National Masonic Research Society, the former at $3.85, the later at $5.

 

THERE have recently come to notice two books bearing the above titles. Sir Wallis Budge is keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum and has spent a great deal of his own time and money in trying to keep people interested in those old kings and pyramid builders who have for so many thousand years rested in the rocky tombs situated along the banks of the Nile. The First Steps in Egyptian gives us a very helpful account of the manner in which the ancient inscriptions were read and translated. The author gives us the ancient texts of nearly all the most important inscriptions and furnishes us with so much information regarding phonetics that almost any fair student of languages should be able to pronounce the words and separate the phonetic elements of the hieroglyphic word from the signs which were simply ideographic. We do not say that a few hours' or a few days' study would enable the average student to read and translate Egyptian texts, but we do say that the average student could in that time acquire much that is worth while towards attaining that end.

 

It is scarcely a century ago that travelers thought the cuneiform inscriptions on the garments of the carved statues of Darias were simply trimming and ornaments. It took some time before scholars could determine that the inscription was writing at all. For ages the most learned men could not translate the first letter or sound of Egyptian. We now know that the Egyptian alphabet does not differ materially from the Hebrew so far as the sounds go, though there are many different figures employed for the same sound under different circumstances and meanings. We also find that the Egyptian has the same habit of dropping out vowel sounds that the Hebrew had. The direction in which the inscriptions should be read, Sir Wallis makes clear. We are also forcibly struck with the fact of how little the Egyptian texts differ during the forty centuries of their history. An Englishman or American of today cannot read without a dictionary and grammar the English of King Alfred of blessed memory, but we see no reason why it would have been specially difficult for Cleopatra to read the hieroglyphic inscriptions of Queen Hattisue or Rameses, any more than the hieroglyphic writings of her own day. It may be quite possible that their spoken tongue changed from age to age, but their writing underwent very little alteration through the five or six thousand years of its prevalence.

 

Regarding the Book of Tutankhamen, we must hold the impression that it was published before the tomb was thoroughly investigated and its inscriptions read. Most of the contents of the book are devoted to the inscriptions belonging to the age of Tutankhamen's father‑in‑law, Akhtenaten, who is known as the heretic king, because he withdrew his patronage from the priesthood and temples of Thebes and the worship of AMEN‑RA and set up a city and worship of his own. Many writers have claimed that his reformation was a change from polytheism to monotheism. Sir Wallis' investigations fail to bear out any such claim. He says that when an ancient Egyptian invoked any particular deity in prayer, he was sure to address that deity as the one and only God in the universe, self‑creating and selfexisting, and that when Akhtenaten addressed particularly the solar disk, he addressed it as the one Only God, though he might the same day address Osiris and Horus in the same way.

 

It would seem that most of these names of deity used by the Egyptians referred to the sun under one or more aspects as regards time of year or situation in the heavens and, of course, they would address the sun as being the One and Only Living Diety. This practically destroys the theory of monotheism other than the theory of Solar Monotheism, which had existed for many centuries, and was a sensible and intelligent conception of Deity; that the sun is the source of life and light upon the earth is easy to see, and we have only to suppose the sun to be the dwelling place of Jehovah, to make it also the Divine Wisdom, the Divine Word, the Divine Power, or strength. We understand that all generations of solar worshippers in Egypt believed so far in monotheism and when they picture the Solar God as in the mural decorations of the tomb of Akhtenaten, showing every ray of light extending from the solar disk to the food on the king's table with a human hand attached to it, the Deity becomes personal enough to be addressed in prayer and praise. We have been much instructed and edified by these books. They are not specially adapted for children of any age; for students who have grown up they will be found helpful.

 

R. C. Blackmer.

 

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THE GREATEST OF UNIVERSITIES

 

Masonry is essentially an educational institution. Its streams of learning are broad and deep, and they are richly freighted with the priceless wisdom of the wisest minds of all lands and all times. Masonry is the greatest of all universities. Men of diverse nationalities, faiths and opinions meet on the checkered floor on equality. Mutual respect, begotten of a common purpose, a desire to disseminate peace, kindliness and good will among men, becomes the chief desideration of those who are diligent in applying themselves to the study of the history, literature and philosophy of Masonry. Masons are learning that the mere knowledge of the ritual and work, while necessary and desirable, must, to be of any value, be based upon an understanding of the origin and meaning of the symbols, ceremonies allegories and traditions used and taught in Masonry. – American Tyler-Keystone.

 

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What to Read in Masonry

 

"A PIG IN A POKE"

 

IT is our purpose to publish on this page for a few months a series of informal essays on what to read in Masonry. The need for this has been suggested by the increasing number of members of the N. M. R. S. who write that while they desire to read about Freemasonry in some of its countless phases they are at a loss where to begin, or how to lay out a course of reading to suit their own particular interests. It is to be hoped that the papers in the present series may be interesting in themselves, and that they will be lit up occasionally by sidelights on Masonic questions; but their main purpose will be to bring together under separate heads such of the thousand or more Masonic books in English as are most worth reading, and that in such a manner as to give a brother some idea of a book before he undertakes to read it.

 

This is a large field to cover. Freemasonry has existed a long while, and in many lands; it has always been busy at many tasks, some of which have had their effect on general history; and at the present it is grown to be so huge in size, so worldwide in influence, and so complex in organization that nothing less than a great library can possibly hold all the volumes that to some extent or other contain records of its prolific life.

 

Usually it is convenient to lay out the field as a whole in general departments, of which the chief are history, philosophy, jurisprudence, ritualism, symbolism, fiction, poetry and miscellaneous - the last named of which represents a variety of subjects not easily classified, such as poetry, music, architecture, orations, periodicals, Negro Masonry, Women in Masonry, Side Orders, and so on ad infinitum.

 

Masonic history naturally includes all written records of the Craft's past activities up to a year or two ago; with such writings must also be included non‑Masonic books that deal incidentally with Masonic themes: there are general histories of architecture from which one can learn much about Operative Masonry; histories of economics, containing chapters on various forms of gild life; treatises on symbolism, etc. The list might be almost endlessly extended.

 

The philosophy of Masonry covers a field almost as large, for under that head are grouped religion, equality, liberty, toleration, democracy and a score of other subjects equally comprehensive. It will be seen at a glance that books more or less useful for reading on these matters are literally legion in number. Of course Freemasonry has its own peculiar philosophy and only such books as deal specifically with it are to be technically described as Masonic philosophy; nevertheless the well read student of that philosophy will find it necessary to read in literature outside the Craft.

 

The same thing may be said of Masonic jurisprudence. For while it must confine itself to Masonic constitutions, laws, customs, regulations and landmarks each of these has its roots in the general ideas of law and of social order, so that the more one focuses his mind on Masonic jurisprudence per se the more he needs an auxiliary literature as a general foundation. It is a misfortune that some of our manuals on jurisprudence were written by laymen with little knowledge of law.

 

When one turns to ritualism and symbolism he meets a similar condition. In some form or other ritual is as universal as the race, and so is symbolism, and the extant literature on both Subjects is enough to occupy a man for a lifetime, providing he is ambitious to get to the bottom of a subject that appears to have no bottom.

 

It is not to be supposed that there will be many ambitious enough to take all knowledge for their province, as Humboldt did, and it will not be the purpose here to make any attempt to list books by the thousand. The above indication of the extent and richness of the general field were given to entice some brethren to enter it, or to persuade those who have had the misfortune to read a few Masonic books of no value to try again with the expectation that where there is so much to read there will be found something abundantly worth reading.

 

"A PIG IN A POKE”

 

One very widely read Mason - widely read, that is, in general literature - wrote us a little while ago that he considered the buying of books in general a pleasure, but, as he expressed it, "not Masonic books; they are too much of a risk; too few of them have any standing. It is like buying a pig in a poke." There was some justification for such an attitude some years ago, but not now, what with so many Grand Lodge educational committees, Masonic libraries and such organizations as the Masonic Service Association and the National Masonic Research Society willing and ready to give advice as to what is worth owning among Masonic books.

 

But there is no need that a brother should lay out a lot of money before beginning to read on Masonry.

 

However far he may be from the center of things he can almost always manage to borrow somehow, if only he will set his mind to it  - a feet proved up years ago by the present writer. Most of the Masonic libraries in the country are very generous with the loan of their volumes, and always there are individual Masons here and there to help a brother along; a great many such exchanges of courtesy are carried on through the headquarters of this Society.

 

Brethren who do purchase an occasional Masonic book sometimes complain of exorbitant prices and frequently have sound justification for their complaint. There is a reason for this. For consider! The greater number of Masonic books are published by private individuals or by small printing concerns; that means high costs of manufacture and distribution. Few of these books ever enjoy the possibility of a wide circulation, and that means a price in proportion. And then there are many books that must be imported, thereby adding to the original price the expenses incidental to long shipping and various import duties. Take it by and large, the prices on Masonic books are nearly always reasonable, and in a melancholy number of instances return very little profit at all to the publishers and none to the authors.

 

IS AN AUTHOR A HUMAN BEING?

 

It is a marvel that we have as many books as we do, considering that last item. It is sometimes forgotten that an author is also a human being. "Hash not an author eyes? bath not an author hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, Subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warm'd and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?" The answer is, if Shakespeare will forgive this paraphrase, that he is, even if some ultra-conservative brethren sometimes appear to believe that while it is perfectly ethical to pay rent for a Masonic hall, it is somehow unethical to pay for a. Masonic book, and that while Masonry may pay a man a salary for giving all his time to be a Grand Secretary for a year (may their salaries, as well as their tribe, increase) it iota traducing of all Masonic principles to pay a man for his time who devotes a year to writing a Masonic book! Masonry can never be a "science of morality" as long as it persists in thwarting the development of its own badly needed literature by any such reasonings.

 

In spite of all the drawbacks and the handicaps both publishers and authors have persevered from generation to generation, content to work underground when not permitted a place in the sun, until now we have become the legatees of a rich heritage of noble books, good to read, pleasant to know, and not at all disgraceful to the Craft. It will be a privilege to recommend a number of lists of them in this page from month to month.

 

----o----

 

THE

 

WANTED: MISSING VOLUMES OF "MASONIC REVIEW"

 

I have a file of "Masonic Review," volumes six to thirty-one inclusive, and volumes thirty-three to forty-eight inclusive. I should like any information concerning the missing years, where they may be obtained, what they may cost, etc.

 

T. J. Fitzpatrick, Bethany, Neb.

 

* * *

 

MOORE'S "FREEMASONS' MAGAZINE" FOR SALE

 

Having noted a query in THE BUILDER'S Question Box for November, on Moore's "Freemasons' Magazine," I am prompted to say that I am trustee for the sale of a Masonic Library in which the "Freemasons' Magazine" is listed. There are for sale thirteen volumes of the magazine in all, from Vol. I, 1841, to and including 1853. This has been priced at $25 for the set. The books are bound in three-quarter morocco.

 

Frank W. Chandler, Trustee,

1611 Rucker Ave., Everett, Wash.

 

* * *

 

THE INDIAN BROOCHES

 

On page 245 of the August BUILDER is a picture of some Indian silver brooches. You mention in the title that Dr. Orr (Bro. Orr) says that they were obtained from the Ojibways.

 

Now the Ojibways did not make these brooches of Masonic motif, but obtained them from the Iroquois. There is no doubt of this. They did not come from "sailors or traders," for they are of Indian make. See my American Indian Freemasonry. I have collected many.

 

Arthur C. Parker, N. Y.

 

* * *

 

JONATHAN TRUMBULL NOT A MASON

 

Can you please inform me if Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., Governor of Connecticut 1798‑1809, was a member of the Craft ?

 

M. W. T., Connecticut.

 

Through Bro. James J. Tyler, of Warren, Ohio, we have received information from Bro. William B. Hall, Secretary, Masonic Veteran Association of Connecticut, Meridian, Conn., as follows:

 

"Referring to the matter of Gov. Trumbull being a Mason. Bro. Brown, a Past Master of Trumbull Lodge, of New Haven, has searched the records of that lodge and cannot find any record to show that Gov. Trumbull was a Mason.

 

"Bro. Goddard, who is Librarian of the Connecticut State Library, has also searched the records of Gov. Trumbull, as filed in the State Library, and cannot find any reference to his having been a Mason. It is, therefore, evident that he was not a Mason."

 

* * *

 

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND THE MASONIC CRAFT

 

1. Has the Church of England ever, at any time in its history, anathematized Masonry or taken a position opposing it?

 

2. Are there records of Archbishops of York and Canterbury having been Masons?

 

3. Are the present Archbishops of York and Canterbury Masons ?

 

4. I recall reading at one time in THE BUILDER of lodges in England composed exclusively of priests of the Church of England; Are there such lodges in existence now, and where?

 

F. L. N., Colorado.

 

1. The Church of England at no time in its history has anathematized Masonry, or taken up a position opposing it.

 

2 and 3. We are not aware of any Archbishops, whether of Canterbury or York, having been Masons, though it is possible some of them have been, but it is certain that the present Archbishops are not members of the Craft.

 

4. There are no lodges in England composed exclusively of priests of the Church of England; but certain lodges are distinctly associated with church effort; and notably the Abbey Lodge, No. 2030, which is specially composed of clergymen and clerical officials of Westminster Abbey; and the Cathedral Lodge, No. 2741, which is similarly composed in relation to St. Paul's Cathedral. But these lodges do not stand alone in being specially associated with religious effort. The Epworth Lodge, No. 3789, is to all intents and purposes Methodistic in its character, and embraces a great number of ministers as well as laymen of both the Wesleyan Methodist and Primitive Methodist Connexion. The Aretas Lodge, No. 4268, is a London offshoot of Epworth, as we think also is Peace and Concord Lodge, No. 3947, while there is a Manchester Epworth Lodge, No. 3921, which is plainly an offshoot of the original Epworth Lodge in London, having the same ideas and style of membership. The Congregationalist or Independent body likewise have a lodge, the Streatham Hill, No. 3784, composed almost, if not entirely, of members of that denomination, including several ministers. But despite their apparent denominational character, these lodges work in the utmost amity with the lodges around them, and there is no sort of sectarian display or exclusiveness among them, while anything in the nature of associating denominational or sectarian propaganda with Masonry has never been attempted by these lodges, and if attempted would promptly be sternly deprecated by the authorities.

 

*  * *

 

WAS DANIEL BOONE A MASON?

 

I wish to ask if there is any evidence to show that Daniel Boone was a Mason?

 

H. B., Ohio.

 

Bro. Ray V. Denslow, Grand Secretary, Grand Chapter Royal Arch Masons of Missouri, has expressed to us his opinion that Boone was not a member of the Craft. However, he has added this: "I have a very good friend who lives in St. Charles and who is very familiar with early historical conditions who seems to be very positive that Daniel Boone was a Mason. So far as I can ascertain, if Boone was a Mason he was never affiliated with any Missouri Lodge. He died about 1819 and this was before our Missouri lodges had very much of a start. It is possible that he may have been a member in Virginia or North Carolina."

 

Bros. Fred W. Hardwick, Grand Secretary of Kentucky, and Charles Comstock, Secretary, Historical Committee, Grand Lodge of Tennessee, have been unable to discover any proof of Boone's membership, but they refer to a resolution printed in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, 1852, page 53, as follows:

 

"Whereas, Daniel Boone, as the hardy, energetic, and indefatigable pioneer, rendered incalculable service to our state; and whereas, at much expense, and trouble, the citizens of Frankfort have removed his remains from the State of Missouri to the cemetery at Frankfort, where they now rest in a conspicuous and eligible position; and whereas, no monument marks his resting place. Therefore,

 

"Resolved, That the sum of fifty dollars be appropriated by this Grand Lodge for the purpose of aiding in erecting some lasting monument over his grave, and that the treasurer of the Grand Lodge pay the same over to Bro. E. H. Taylor, treasurer of said company; provided the same shall not be paid until the monument be contracted for."

 

Bro. Comstock has searched the Centennial History of the Grand Lodge - of Kentucky, by H. B. Grant, but has found no reference to Boone save to the above resolution. Bro. Comstock adds: "I recall seeing a picture of the burial of Daniel Boone, many years since, and one of the participants appeared to be wearing a Masonic collar.”

 

* * *

 

INFORMATION ABOUT WEBB'S MONITOR

 

In the November issue, page 349, you have an inquiry from L. H. L., "Was Webb's Monitor published in more than one edition?" I have a record of the following editions: *1, New York, 1797. *2, New York, 1802. 53, Providence, 1805. 4, Boston, 1808. *5, Salem, Mass., 1812. 6, Andover, 1816. *7, Boston and Salem, 1816. 8, Montpelier, 1816. 9, Salem, 1818 (published by Flagg). *10, Salem, 1818 (published by Cushing). * 11, Salem, 1821. 12, Spanish only. There were no further editions as such; versions published over the name of Morris, Carson, etc., are revisions and not entitled to the title of Webb's Monitor any more than Webb's is entitled to be called Preston's. Of the editions listed, I have those marked * and they are available for use by any student.

 

D. D. Berolzheimer, New York.

 

* * *

 

"KNIGHTS TEMPLAR" IS CORRECT

 

Bro. H. E. Zimmerman's contribution to the Question Box in THE BUILDER, vol. X, No. 10 (October, 1924), contains, among others, the question, "If Masonry was justified in adopting a form that is wrong historically and philologically, when was the change made and why?" I cannot answer the question, but I wish to deny the quasi premise it contains.

 

The plural form Knights Templar is not wrong, certainly not philologically. On that point I would take issue with even the editor or compiler of a dictionary. The publisher of a dictionary need not be either a scholar, grammarian or philologist, and his opinion, as publisher, merits no greater consideration than would that of any other business man with equal education. Notwithstanding the publishers' statement to the contrary, "Templar" is an adjective, as much so as is "apple" in the compound "appletree." Of all the trees growing in God's universe, high trees, low trees, spreading trees, scrubby trees, there is a group or family of them that we identify as appletrees. Though the word "apple," as commonly used, performs the functions of a noun and is, then, a noun, in the compound "appletree," it performs the function of an adjective and is an adjective; as much so as "high" or "low" are adjectives, as commonly used. In a phrase or sentence it is the use or the function of a word alone that determines what that word is. So "Templar" is an adjective in the phrase "Knight Templar." It tells us what particular kind of a knight the Knight Templar is. Among all the knights in the world, rich, poor, fat, lean, good, bad, each a member of a group with one or the other of these characteristics, there is also a group of knights who have the characteristic of being, each one of them, a Templar. In the phrase "Knight Templar" the adjective, instead of preceding the noun, as it generally does in the English language, follows its noun. In the French language the more common position for an adjective is after its noun and not preceding it. In neither language, however, is that position for the adjective with respect to its noun absolutely fixed or demanded. It depends somewhat upon the writer's mood whether "A young and charming maiden lightly skips across the green," or whether "A maiden, young and charming," does so. A Knight Templar might just as well be a Templar Knight and, in the German language, that is actually what he is, a "Tempelritter," joined into one word, even, exactly like our "appletree," where the adjective precedes its noun instead of following it.

 

Historically there may have been Templars who had not the distinction of being also knights of this or that Order, and there undoubtedly were knights who were not Templars. But a member of the Order under discussion was a Knight Templar, and two of them were Knights Templar exactly the same as, in the present day, two knights of the Order of the Garter are not Knights of the Orders of the Garters. Dictionaries may and do say that "Knights Templars" is the correct plural, usage may establish it as being correct, but, logically and philologically and as a plural, Knights Templars is as wrong as would be "feetsteps," "spoonsfuls," or "cupsfuls." Horrors!

 

 

B.A. Eisenlohr, Ohio

 

* * *

 

OLD BOOK FOR SALE

 

I have for sale a copy of The Sufferings of John Coustos for Freemasonry, and for his refusing to turn Roman Catholic, in the Inquisition at Lisbon, etc. Part II, from page 78 to 400 inclusive, is occupied by a history of the Inquisition. Bound in ornamented leather; covers loose. Published by Strahan, London, 1746. Offers will receive careful consideration.

 

H. I. Schmits, 1124 Chestnut Ave. Flat, Minneapolis, Minn.

 

* * *

 

MISSING SINCE NOV. 10, 1924

 

William Egge, age 35, 574 Hamilton avenue, North Bergen, N. J. About 5 feet 9 inches tall, 167 pounds, medium built, fair complexion, smooth shaven, brown hair, blue eyes. Wore an old grayish suit with Masonic pin in coat. When last seen was driving a Daniels' sedan auto, license No. 124639, N. J. Carpenter and builder by trade. If found please notify Mystic Tie Lodge, No. 123, Union Hill, N. J.

 

----o----

 

YE EDITOR'S CORNER

 

May you have a happy and prosperous New Year.

 

* * *

 

Sez the old feller, see he: "This evolution theory is funny monkey business."

 

* * *

 

Says George Bernard Shaw: "Democracy prefers second-bests always." It certainly did when it preferred George Bernard Shawl

 

* * *

 

Bro. Sir Alfred Robbins' now famous visit to this land attracted the attention of men in high places. President Coolidge wrote to congratulate him on his mission as having helped to cement Anglo-American friendship; Secretary Hughes asked the American Ambassador at the Court of St. James to congratulate Sir Alfred on "the splendid work he is doing to strengthen the ties which bind our countries together;" and Chief Justice Taft wrote to felicitate him on "the very fine and useful impression which your visit to the United States gave to American Masons."

 

* * *

 

York Grand Lodge of Mexico has published a chart showing the genealogy and other connections of all lodges now under its jurisdiction. The chart is accompanied by five pages of explanatory text. Thanks to the generosity of York Grand Lodge we have received, at our own request, a package of copies for free distribution. In asking for a copy please enclose stamp, and write your name and address plainly.

 

* * *

 

Here is a cross-word puzzle. What word contains three of itself ? No prizes are offered for the correct answer, because the correct answer is not anticipated.

 

* * *

 

If children should respect their parents it would naturally follow that parents should be respectable. Q. E. D.

 

* * *

 

GENE SKINKLE'S HOLIDAY GREETINGS

 

One of the Christmas and New Year's events for a wide circle of his friends each year is Bro. Gene Skinkle's holiday greetings, entitled "Treasures" this time. We pass it on to you for your "Golden Treasury" of friendly verse:

 

Dame Fortune smiled on us, we will say,

When she gave us you for a friend one day;

To others she's given a golden hoard

To be wontonly scattered, or miserly stored.

But ours is the treasure that's cherished more

Than gleaming gold, or the sparkling gem

That graces the monarch's diadem.

For gems may be lost and wealth takes wing,

While friendship for aye to the heart cloth cling

Cheering, uplifting the faltering soul

'Long the rugged trail, toward the final goal.

So we thank Dame Fortune, and tender to you

Our friendship, as kindly and loving and true

As yours has been through the passing years

The friendship we cherish and love that cheers.

 

 

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