The Builders: A Story and Study of Masonry

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over truth, but to set it in order, to seek out the rhythm of things and their reason for being. Beginning in wonder, it sees the familiar as if it were strange, and its mind is full of the air that plays round every subject.

s lofty spaces, its windows with the dimness and glory of the Infinite behind them, the spring of its pillars, the leap of its arches, and its roof inlaid with stars. Inevitably we ask, whence came this temple of faith and friendship, and what does it mean-rising

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t human lips can make. To be indifferent to God is to be indifferent to the greatest of all realities, that upon which the aspiration of humanity rests for its uprising passion of desire. No institution that is dumb concerning the meaning of life and the character of the universe, can last. It is a house built upon the sand, doomed to fall when the winds blow and floods beat upon it, lacking a sure foundation. No human fraternity t

rd,[177] the Ineffable Name; a quest that never tires, never tarries, knowing the while that every name is inadequate, and all words are but symbols of a Truth too great for words-every letter of the alphabet, in fact, having been evolved from some primeval sign or signal of

freedom o

joy of pa

soul's pere

larger thou

athema. Possession, not recognition, is the only thing important; and if it is not recognized, the fault must surely be, in large part, our

all! in

y clime

y Savage, a

, Jove,

en the great mission of Masonry to preserve these precious truths, beside which, in the long result of thought and faith, all else fades and grows dim. Of this there is no doubt; and science has come at last to vindicate this wise insight, by unveiling the unity of the universe with overwhelming emphasis. Unquestionably t

d firmament

base built

nd epistles is heard the everlasting truth of one God who is love, and who requires of men that they love one another, do justly, be merciful, keep themselves unspotted by evil, and walk humbly before Him in whose great hand they stand. There we read of the Man of Galilee who taught that, in the far distances of the divine Fatherhood,

erseveringly it has propagated it through the centuries, and never more zealously than in our age. Scarcely a Masonic discourse is pronounced, or a Masonic lesson read, by the highest officer or the humblest lecturer, that does not earnestly teach this one true religi

here is a Supreme Mind which initiates, impels, and controls all. That behind the life of man and its pathetic story in history, in it and over it, there is a righteous Will, the intelligent Conscience of the Most High. In short, t

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n that one

od. God fir

initesim

love, love

ss, everfl

ht, when, indeed, it is not a confession of intellectual bankruptcy, or a labor-saving device to escape the toil and fatigue of high thinking. It trembles in perpetual hesitation, like a donkey equi-distant between two bundles of hay, starving to death but unable to make up its mind. No; the real alternative is materialism, which played so large a part in philosophy fifty years ago, and which, defeated there, has betaken itself to the field of practical affairs. This

alisms and optimisms of humanity. It takes the spiritual view of life and the world as being most in accord with the facts of experience, the promptings of right reason, and the voice of conscience. In other words, it dares to read the meaning of the uni

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workman's w

orces, trace its laws, and make a map of it, finding the infinite even in the infinitesimal, shows that the mind of man is akin to the Mind that made it. Also, there are two aspects of the nature of man which lift him above the brute and bespeak his divine heredity. They are reason and conscience, both of which are of more than sense and time, having their

ceaseless concern to the Eternal. Here is a philosophy which lights up the universe like a sunrise, confirming the dim, dumb certainties of the soul, evolving meaning out of mystery, and hope out of what would else be despair. It brings out the colors of human life, investing our fleeting mortal years-brief at their longest, broken at its best-with enduring significance and beauty. It gives to each of us, however humble and obscure, a place and a part in the stupendous historical

I

or liberty of conscience, for the freedom of the intellect, and for the right of all men to stand erect, unfettered, and unafraid, equal before God and the law, each respecting the rights of his fellows. What we have to remember is, that before this truth was advocated by any order, or embodi

ee: Freedom d

h our faces t

es and crawling

hreads about u

iron chains and

owness heart,

recreated y

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adenced as the

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men for her

fair and front

by which no man was ever injured, and that truth which makes man free. Down through the centuries-often in times when the highest crime was not murder, but thinking, and the human conscience was a captive dragged at the wheel of the ecclesiastical chariot-always and everywhere Masonry has stood for the right of the soul to know the truth, and to look u

cholastics, Masonry will never ground arms! Her plea is for government without tyranny and religion without superstition, and as surely as suns rise and set her fight will be crowned with victory. Defeat is impossible, the more so because sh

be crushed by the tramp of heavy years. Help a man to a firm faith in an Infinite Pity at the heart of this dark world, and from how many fears is he free! Once a temple of terror, haunted by shadows, his heart becomes "a cathedral of serenity and gladness," and his life is enlarged and unfolded into richness of character and service. Nor is there any tyranny like the tyranny of time. Give a man a day to live, and he is like a bird in a cage beating against i

ich intellect is the slave of greed or passion. What makes a man great and freed of soul, here or anywhither, is loyalty to the laws of right, of truth, of purity, of love, and the lofty will of God. How to live is the one matter; and the oldest man in his ripe age has yet to seek a wiser way than to build, year by year, upon a foundation of faith in God, using the Square of justice, the Plumb-line of rectitude, the Compass

cident. After much debate, a gray-haired chief recalled the feeling which came over him on seeing a little bird pass through, on fluttering wing, the warm bright hall of feasting, while winter winds raged without. The momen

tell whence. We go, and they cannot tell whither. Our flight is brief. Therefore,

l that makes life worth living; a tragedy which, in its simplicity and power, makes the heart ache and stand still. Then, out of the thick darkness there rises, like a beautiful white star, that in man which is most akin to God, his love of truth, his loyalty to the highest, and his willingness to go down into the night of death, if only virtue may live and shine like a pulse of fire in the evening sky. Here is the ultimate and final witness of our divinity and immortality-the sublime, death-defying moral heroism of

to yield our grasp of these solid things, and trust ourselves to the invisible Soul within us, which betakes itself along an invisible path into the Unknown. It is strange: a door opens into a new world; and man, child of the dust that he is, follows his adventurous Soul, as the Soul

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autifu

owerfu

n 'tis

of a demig

scat

nto the voi

lor

erished beyo

gh

children

ght

it a

n bosom bui

u; for that is the faith of humanity, your race, and those who are fairest in its records. Let us lay it to heart, love it, and act upon it, that we may learn its deep meaning as regards others-our dear dead whom we think of, perhaps, ever

e stately mans

wift sea

low-vaul

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bees at work. Did he know what the bee hive means in the symbolism of Masonry? (Read an interesting article on "Shakespeare and Freemasonry," American Freemason, January, 1912.) It reminds one of the passage in the Complete Angler, by Isaak Walton, in which the gentle fisherman

ms of Philosophy,

who has a higher conception of God than those about him, and who denies that their conception is God, is very likely to be called an Atheist by men who are really far less believers in God than he" (Morals and Dogma, p. 643). Thus, as Pike goes on to say, the early Christians, who said the heathen idols were no Gods, were accounted Atheists, and accordingly put to death. We need not hold a brief for the Grand Orient, but it behooves us to understand its position and point of view, lest we be found guilty of a petty bigotry in regard to a word when the reality is a common treasure. First, it was felt that France needed the aid of

hilosophy of Freem

ly History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, by G.F. Fort-one of the

ed, it is little more than a crude tri-theism, but at its best it is not so. "God thrice, not three Gods," was the word of St. Augustine (Essay on the Trinity), meaning three aspects of God-not the mathematics of His nature, but its manifoldness, its variety in unity. The late W.N. Clarke-who put more common sense into theology tha

er. No Mason need be told what a large place the Bible has in the symbolism, ritu

sm of Rudolf Eucken, with its gospel of "an independent spiritual life"-independent, that is, of vicissitude-and its insistence upon the fact that the meaning of life depends upon our "building up within ourselves a life that is not of time" (Life's Basis and Life's Ideal). But the intent of these pages is, rather, to emphasize the spiritual view of life and the world as the philosophy under

RIT OF

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ew light on

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comes we men

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build the

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Markham