Section 26

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Symbolism of Labor 267

der plant, and the finished tree, upon its trestle
board.

Old ocean works for ever — restless and murmuring —
but still bravely working; and storms and tempests,
the purifiers of stagnant nature, are inscribed upon its
trestle board.

And God Himself, the Grand Architect, the Master
Builder of the world, has labored from eternity; and
working by His omnipotent will. He inscribes His plans up-
on illimitable space, for the universe is His trestle board.

There was a saying of the monks of old which is well
worth meditation. They taught that * 'labor are est
orare'^ — labor is worship. They did not, it is true,
always practise the wise precept. They did not always
make labor a part of their religion.

Like Onuphrius, who lived threescore years and ten
in the desert, without human voice or human sym-
pathy to cheer him, because he had not learned that
man was made for man, those old ascetics went into
the wilderness, and built cells, and occupied them-
selves in solitary meditation and profitless thought.
They prayed much, but they did no work.

And thus they passed their lives, giving no pity, aid,
or consolation to their fellow-men, adding no mite to
the treasury of human knowledge, and leaving the
world, when their selfish pilgrimage was finished, with-
out a single contribution, in labor of mind or body, to
its welfare.^

Men, seeing the uselessness of these ascetic lives,
shrink now from their example, and fall back upon that

^Aristotle says, "He that cannot contract society with others,
or who, through his own self-sufficiency [avrapKeiap], does not need
it, forms no part of the community, but is either a wild beast or a
god."

268 Symbolism of Freemasonry

wiser teaching, that he best does God's will who best
does God's work. The world now knows that heaven
is not served by man's idleness — that the "dolce far
niente,'^ though it might suit an Italian lazzaroni, is
not fit for a brave Christian man, and that they who
would do rightly, and act well their part, must take this
distich for their motto:

With this hand work, and with the other pray,
And God will bless them both from day today.

Now, this doctrine, that labor is worship, is the very
doctrine that has been advanced and maintained, from
time immemorial, as a leading dogma of the Order of
Freemasonry. There is no other human institution
under the sun which has set forth this great principle
in such bold relief. We hear constantly of Freemasonry
as an institution that inculcates morality, that fosters
the social feeling, that teaches brotherly love; and all
this is well, because it is true. But we must never
forget that from its foundation-stone to its pinnacle,
all over its vast temple, is inscribed, in symbols of
living light, the great truth that labor is worship.

It has been supposed that, because we speak of Free-
masonry as a speculative system, it has nothing to do
with the practical. But this is a most grievous error.
Freemasonry is, it is true, a speculative science, but it
is a speculative science based upon an operative art.
All its symbols and allegories refer to this connection. Its
very language is borrowed from the art, and it is singu-
larly suggestive that the initiation of a candidate into
its mysteries is called, in its peculiar phraseology, work.

We repeat that this expression is singularly sug-
gestive. When the Lodge is engaged in reading peti-
tions, hearing reports, debating financial matters, it is

Symbolism of Labor 269

said to be occupied in business; but when it is engaged
in the form and ceremony of initiation into any of the de-
grees, it is said to be at work. Initiation is Masonic labor.

This phraseology at once suggests the connection of
our speculative system with an operative art that pre-
ceded it, and upon which it has been founded. This
operative art must have given it form and features
and organization.

If the speculative system had been founded solely
on philosophical or ethical principles, if it had been
derived from some ancient or modern sect of philos-
ophers— from the Stoics, the Epicureans, or the Platon-
ists of the heathen world, or from any of the many
divisions of the scholastics of the middle ages — this
origin would most certainly have affected its interior
organization as well as its external form, and we should
have seen our modern Masonic reunions assuming the
style of academies or schools.

Its technical language — for, like every institution iso-
lated from the ordinary and general pursuits of man-
kind, it would have had its own technical dialect —
would have been borrowed from, and would be easily
traced to, the peculiar phraseology of the philosophic
sects which had given it birth. There would have
been the sophists and the philosophers; the gramma-
tists and the grammarians; the scholars, the masters,
and the doctors. It would have had its trivial and its
quadrivial schools; its occupation would have been
research, experiment, or investigation. In brief, its
whole features would have been colored by a grammat-
ical, a rhetorical, or a mathematical cast, accordingly as
it should have been derived from a sect in which any
one of these three characteristics was the predominating
influence.

270 Symbolism of Freemasonry

But in the organization of Freemasonry, as it now
presents itself to us, we see an entirely different appear-
ance. Its degrees are expressive, not of advancement
in philosophic attainments, but of progress in a purely
mechanical pursuit. Its highest grade is that of Master
of the Work. Its places of meeting are not schools,
but Lodges, places where the workmen formerly lodged,
in the neighborhood of the building on whose construc-
tion they were engaged. It does not form theories,
but builds temples. It knows nothing of the rules of
the dialecticians — of the syllogism, the dilemma, the
enthymeme, or the sorites — but it recurs to the homely
implements of its operative parent for its methods of
instruction, and with the plumb-line it inculcates rec-
titude of conduct, and draws lessons of morality from
the workman's square.

Freemasonry sees in the Supreme God that it wor-
ships, not a "numen divinum/' a divine power, nor a
^'moderator rerum omnium,'^ a controller of all things,
as the old philosophers designated Him, but the Grand
Architect of the Universe. The Masonic idea of God
refers to Him as the Mighty Builder of this terrestrial
globe, and all the countless worlds that surround it.
He is not the ens entium, or to theion, or any other of
the thousand titles with which ancient and modern
speculation has invested Him, but simply the Architect
— as the Greeks have it, the apxos reKTcov, the Chief
Workman, — under Whom we are all workmen;^ and
hence our labor is His worship.

This idea, then, of Masonic labor, is closely con-
nected with the history of the organization of the

* "Der Arbeiter," says Bro. Lenning, "ist der symbolische Name
eines Freimaurers" — the Workman is the symbolic name of a
Freemason. — "Encyclopadae der Freimaurerei."

Symbolism of Labor 271

institution. When we say ''the Lodge is at work," we
recognize that it is in the legitimate practice of that
occupation for which it was originally intended. The
Freemasons that are in it are not occupied in thinking,
or speculating, or reasoning, but simply and emphatic-
ally in working. The duty of a Freemason as such,
in his Lodge, is to work. Thereby he accomplishes the
destiny of his Order. Thereby he best fulfils his obli-
gation to the Grand Architect, for with the Freemason
laborare est orare — labor is worship.

The importance of Masonic labor being thus demon-
strated, the question next arises as to the nature of that
labor. What is the work that a Freemason is called
upon to perform?

Temple building was the original occupation of our
ancient brethren. Leaving out of view that system of
ethics and of religious philosophy, that search after
truth, those doctrines of the unity of God and the
immortality of the soul, which alike distinguish the
ancient Mysteries and the Masonic institution, and
which both must have derived from a common origin
— ^most probably from some priesthood of the olden
time — let our attention be exclusively directed, for the
present, to that period, so familiar to every Freemason,
when under the supposed Grand Mastership of King
Solomon, Freemasonry first assumed "a local habita-
tion and a name" in the holy city of Jerusalem. There
the labor of the Israelites and the skill of the Tyrians
were occupied in the construction of that noble temple
whose splendor and magnificence of decoration made
it one of the wonders of the world.

Here, then, we see the two united nations directing
their attention, with surprising harmony, to the task
of temple building. The Tyrian workmen, coming im-

272 Symbolism of Freemasonry

mediately from the bosom of the mystical society of
Dionysian artificers, whose sole employment was the
erection of sacred edifices throughout all Asia Minor,
indoctrinated the Jews with a part of their architec-
tural skill, and bestowed upon them also a knowledge
of those sacred Mysteries which they had practised at
Tyre, and from which the present interior form of
Freemasonry is said to be derived.

Now, if there be any so incredulous as to refuse their
assent to the universally received Masonic tradition
on this subject, if there be any who would deny all con-
nection of King Solomon with the origin of Freemasonry,
except it be in a mythical or symbolical sense, such
incredulity will not at all affect the chain of argument
which we are disposed to use. For it will not be denied
that the corporations of builders in the middle ages,
those men who were known as *' Traveling Freema-
sons," were substantial and corporeal, and that the
cathedrals, abbeys, and palaces, whose ruins are still
objects of admiration to all observers, bear conclusive
testimony that their existence was nothing like a myth,
and that their labors were not apocryphal.

But these Traveling Freemasons, whether led into
the error, if error it be, by a mistaken reading of his-
tory, or by a superstitious reverence for tradition, al-
ways esteemed King Solomon as the founder of their
Order. So that the first absolutely historical details
that we have of the Masonic institution, connect it
with the idea of a temple.

It is only for this idea that we contend, for it proves
that the first Freemasons of whom we have authentic
record, whether they were at Jerusalem or in Europe,
and whether they flourished a thousand years before or
a thousand years after the birth of Christ, always sup-

Symbolism of Labor 273

posed that temple building was the peculiar specialty
of their Craft, and that their labor was to be the erec-
tion of temples in ancient times, and cathedrals and
churches in the Christian age.

So that we come back at last to the proposition with
which we had commenced, namely: that temple build-
ing was the original occupation of our ancient brethren.
To this is added the fact, that after a long lapse of
centuries, a body of men is found in the middle ages
who were universally recognized as Freemasons, and
who directed their attention and their skill to the same
pursuit, and were engaged in the construction of cathe-
drals, abbeys, and other sacred edifices, these being the
Christian substitute for the heathen or the Jewish
temple.

Therefore, when we view the history of the Order
as thus developed in its origin and its design, we are
justified in saying that, in all times past, its members
have been recognized as men of labor, and that their
labor has been temple building.

But our ancient brethren wrought in both operative
and speculative Freemasonry, while we work only in
speculative. They worked with the hand; we work
with the brain. They dealt in the material; we in the
spiritual. They used in their labor wood and stones;
we use thoughts, and feelings, and affections. We both
devote ourselves to labor, but the object of the labor
and the mode of the labor are different.

The French rituals have given us the key-note to the
explanation of what is Masonic labor when they say
that "Freemasons erect temples for virtue and dun-
geons for vice.'^

The modern Freemasons, like the builders of old,
are engaged in the construction of a temple; but with

274 Symbolism of Freemasonry

this difference: that the temple of the latter was ma-
terial, that of the former spiritual. When the opera-
tive art was the predominant characteristic of the
Order, Freemasons were engaged in the construction
of material and earthly temples. But when the opera-
tive art ceased, and the speculative science took its
place, then the Freemasons symbolized the labors of
their predecessors by engaging in the construction of a
spiritual temple in their hearts, which was to be made
so pure that it might become the dwelling-place of Him
who is all purity. It was to be **a house not made with
hands,'^ where the hewn stone was to be a purified heart.

This symbolism, which represents man as a temple,
a house, a sacred building in which God is to dwell, is
not new, nor peculiar to the Masonic science. It was
known to the Jewish, and is still recognized by the
Christian, system. The Talmudists had a saying that
the threefold repetition of the words ''Temple of
Jehovah,^' in the seventh chapter and fourth verse of
the Book of Jeremiah, was intended to allude to the
existence of three temples, and in one of their treatises
it is said, ''Two temples have been destroyed, but the
third will endure forever,'' by which it is manifest that
they referred to the temple of the immortal soul in man.

By a similar allusion, which, however, the Jews chose
wilfully to misunderstand, Christ declared, "Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." And
the beloved disciple, who records the conversation,
does not allow us to doubt of the Saviour's meaning.

"Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this
temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three
days?

"But he spake of the temple of his body."^

» John iii. 19-21.

Symbolism of Labor 275

In more than one place the apostle Paul has fondly-
dwelt upon this metaphor. Thus he tells the Corin-
thians that they are *' God's building," and he calls
himself the ''wise master builder/' who was to lay the
foundation in his truthful doctrine, upon which they
were to erect the edifice.^ And he says to them imme-
diately afterwards, ''Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in
you?"

In consequence of these teachings of the apostles, the
idea that the body was a temple has pervaded, from
the earliest times to the present day, the system of
Christian or theological symbolism. Indeed, it has
sometimes been carried to an almost too fanciful excess.
Thus Samuel Lee, in that curious and rare old work,
The Temple of Solomon, portrayed hy Scripture Light,
thus dilates on this symbolism of the temple:

"The foundation of this temple may be laid in hu-
mility and contrition of spirit, wherein the inhabiter of
eternity delighteth to dwell; we may refer the porch to
the mouth of a saint, wherein every holy Jacob erects
the pillars of God^s praise, calling upon and blessing
His name for received mercies; when songs of deliver-
ance are uttered from the doors of His lips. The holy
place is the renewed mind, and the windows therein
may denote divine illumination from above, cautioning
a saint lest they be darkened with the smoke of anger,
the mist of grief, the dust of vain-glory, or the filthy
mire of worldly cares. The golden candlesticks, the in-
fused habits of divine knowledge resting within the
soul. The shew-bread, the word of grace exhibited in
the promises for the preservation of a Christian's life
and glory. The golden altar of odors, the breathings,

* 1 Corinthiana iii. 9.

276 Symbolism op Freemasonry

sufferings, and groanings after God, ready to break
forth into Abba, Father. The veileSy the righteousness
of Christ. The holy of holies may relate to the con-
science purified from dead works and brought into a
heavenly frame. "^

Thus he proceeds, symbolizing every part and uten-
sil of the temple as alluding to some emotion or affection
of man, but in language too tedious for quotation.

In a similar vein has the celebrated John Bunyan,
the author of the Pilgriin's Progress, proceeded in his
Temple of Solomon Spiritualized, to refer every part of
that building to a symbolic meaning, selecting, however,
the church, or congregation of good men, rather than
the individual man, as the object of the symbolism.

In the middle ages the Hermetic philosophers seem to
have given the same interpretation of the temple, and
Swedenborg in his mystical writings adopts the idea.

Hitchcock, who has written an admirable little work
on Swedenborg considered as a Hermetic Philosopher,
thus alludes to this subject, and his language, as that of
a learned and shrewd investigator, is well worthy of
quotation :

''With, perhaps, the majority of readers, the Taber-
nacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon were mere
buildings; very magnificent indeed, but still mere
buildings for the worship of God. But some are struck
with many portions of the account of their erection,
admitting a moral interpretation; and while the build-
ings are allowed to stand (or to have stood once) visible
objects, these interpreters are delighted to meet with
indications that Moses and Solomon, in building the
temples, were wise in the knowledge of God and of
man; from which point it is not difficult to pass on to