part in the work of the Grand Lodge, entering it, apparently, in

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is still the groundwork of Masonry, has been print- ed in many editions, and is accessible to every one.
Another event in the story of the Grand Lodge, never to be forgotten, was a plan started in 1724 of raising funds of General Charity for distressed Masons. Proposed by the Earl of Dalkeith, it at once met with enthusiastic support, and it is a cu- rious coincidence that one of the first to petition for relief was Anthony Sayer, first Grand Master. The minutes do not state whether he was relieved at that time, but we know that sums of money were voted to him in 1730, and again in 1741. ‘This Board of Benevolence, as it came to be called, be- came very important, it being unanimously agreed in 1733 that all such business as could not be con- veniently despatched by the Quarterly Communica- tion should be referred to it. Also, that all Masters of Regular Lodges, together with all present, for- mer, and future Grand Officers should be members of the Board. Later this Board was still further em- powered to hear complaints and to report thereon to the Grand Lodge. Let it also be noted that in ac- tual practice the Board of Charity gave free play to
1721. Toward the close of his life he suffered many misfortunes, but of what description we are not told. He died in 1739. Perhaps his learning was exaggerated by his Masonic eulogists, but he was a noble man and manifestly a useful one (Gould’s History of Ma- sonry, vol. iii).
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one of the most admirable principles of Masonry — helping the needy and unfortunate, whether within the order or without.
LEY
Once more we come to a much debated question, about which not a little has been written, and most of it wide of the mark — the question of the origin of the Third Degree. Here again students have gone hither and yon hunting in every cranny for the motif of this degree, and it would seem that their failure to find it would by this time have turned them back to the only. place where they may ever hope to discover it—in Masonry itself. But no; they are bound to bring mystics, occultists, alche- mists, Culdees or Cabalists—even the Vehmgerichte of Germany — into the making of Masonry some- where, if only for the sake of glamor, and this is the last opportunity to do it.’ Willing to give due credit
1 Having emphasized this point so repeatedly, the writer feels it just to himself to state his own position, lest he be thought a kind of materialist, or at least an enemy of mysticism. Not so. Instead, he has long been an humble student of the great mystics; they are his best friends — as witness his two little books, The Eternal Christ, and What Have the Saints to Teach Us? But mysticism is one thing, and mystification is another, and the former may be stated in this way:
First, by mysticism—only another word for spirituality —is meant our sense of an Unseen World, of our citizenship in it, of God and the soul, and of all the forms of life and beauty as sym-
2
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to Cabalists and Rosicrucians, the present writer rejects all such theories on the ground that there is no reason for thinking that they helped to make Masonry, much less any fact to prove 1t.
Hear now a review of the facts in the case. No one denies that the Temple of Solomon was much in the minds of men at the time of the organization of the Grand Lodge, and long before —as in the Bacon romance of the New Atlantis in 1597.
bols of things higher than themselves. That is to say, if a man has any religion at all that is not mere theory or form, he is a mystic; the difference between him and Plato or St. Francis being only a matter of genius and spiritual culture — between a boy whistling a tune and Beethoven writing music.
Second, since mysticism is native to the soul of man and the common experience of all who rise above the animal, it is not an exclusive possession of any set of adepts to be held as a secret. Any man who bows in prayer, or lifts his thought heavenward, is an initiate into the eternal mysticism which is the strength and solace of human life.
Third, the old time Masons were religious men, and as such sharers in this great human experience of divine things, and did not need to go to Hidden Teachers to learn mysticism. They lived and worked in the light of it. It shone in their symbols, as it does in all symbols that have any meaning or beauty. It is, indeed, the soul of symbolism, every emblem being an effort to express a reality too great for words.
So, then, Masonry is mystical as music is mystical —like poetry, and love, and faith, and prayer, and all else that makes it worth our time to live; but its mysticism is sweet, sane, and natural, far from fantastic, and in nowise eerie, unreal, or unbalanced. Of course these words fail to describe it, as all words must, and it is therefore that Masonry uses parables, pictures, and symbols.
1 Seventeenth Century Descriptions of Solomon’s Temple, by Prof. S. P. Johnston (4. Q. C., xii, 135).
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Broughton, Selden, Lightfoot, Walton, Lee, Pri- deaux, and other English writers were deeply inter- ested in the Hebrew Temple, not, however, so much in its symbolical suggestion as in its form and con- _ struction — a model of which was brought to Lon- don by Judah Templo in the reign of Charles II.’ It was much the same on the Continent, but so far from being a new topic of study and discussion, we may trace this interest in the Temple all through the Middle Ages. Nor was it peculiar to the Cabal- ists, at least not to such a degree that they must needs be brought in to account for the Biblical imagery and symbolism in Masonry. Indeed, it might with more reason be argued that Masonry explains the interest in the Temple than otherwise. For, as James Fergusson remarks — and there is no higher authority than the historian of architecture: “There is perhaps no building of the ancient world which has excited so much attention since the time of its destruction, as the Temple of Solomon built in Jerusalem, and its successor as built by Herod. Throughout the Middle A ges it influenced to a con- siderable degree the forms of Christian churches, and its peculiarities were the watchwords and rally- ing points of associations of builders.”* Clearly, the notion that interest in the Temple was new, and
1 T'yansactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. ii. 2Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, article “Temple.”
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that its symbolical meaning was imposed upon Ma- sonry as something novel, falls flat.
But we are told that there is no hint of the Hiram- ic legend, still less any intimation of a tragedy asso- ciated with the building of the Temple. No Hiram- ic legend! No hint of tragedy! Why, both were almost as old as the Temple itself, rabbinic legend affirming that “all the workmen were killed that they should not build another Temple devoted to idolatry, Hiram himself being translated to heaven like Enoch.” * ‘The Talmud has many variations of this legend. Where would one expect the legends of the Temple to be kept alive and be made use of in ceremonial, if not in a religious order of builders like the Masons? Is it surprising that we find so few references in later literature to what was thus held as a sacred secret? As we have seen, the leg- end of Hiram was kept as a profound secret until 1841 by the French Companionage, who almost cer- tainly learned it from the Free-masons. Naturally it was never made a matter of record,’ but was
1 Jewish Encyclopedia, art. “Freemasonry.” Also Builder’s Rites, G. W. Speth.
2In the Book of Constitutions, 1723, Dr. Anderson dilates at length on the building of the Temple — including a note on the mean- ing of the name Abif, which, it will be remembered, was not found in the Authorized Version of the Bible; and then he suddenly breaks off with the words: “But leaving what must not, indeed cannot, be communicated in Writing.” It is incredible that he thus introduced
GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 193
transmitted by oral tradition within the order; and it was also natural, if not inevitable, that the legend of the master-artist of the Temple should be “the Master’s Part” among Masons who were temple- builders. How else explain the veiled allusions to the name in the Old Charges as read to Entered Apprentices, if it was not a secret reserved for a higher rank of Mason? Why any disguise at all if it had no hidden meaning? Manifestly the motif of the Third Degree was purely Masonic, and we need not go outside the traditions of the order to account for it. vee
‘Not content to trace the evolution of Masonry, even so‘able a man as Albert Pike will have it that to a few men of intelligence who belonged to one of the four old lodges in 1717 “‘is to be ascribed the authorship of the Third Degree, and the introduc- tion of Hermetic and other symbols into Masonry; that they framed the three degrees for the purpose of communicating their doctrines, veiled by their symbols, to those fitted to receive them, and gave to others trite moral explanations they could compre- hend.” * How gracious of them to vouchsafe even trite explanations, but why frame a set of degrees
among Masons a name and legend unknown to them. Had he done
so, would it have met with such instant and universal acceptance by
old Masons who stood for the ancient usages of the order? 1Letter to Gould “Touching Masonic Symbolism.”
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to conceal what they wished to hide? This is the same idea of something alien imposed upon Mason- ry from without, with the added suggestion, novel indeed, that Masonry was organized to hide the truth, rather than to teach it. But did Masonry have to go outside its own history and tradition to learn Hermetic truths and symbols? Who was Hermes? Whether man or myth no one knows, but he was a great figure in the Egyptian Mysteries, and was called the Father of Wisdom.* What was his wisdom? From such fragments of his lore as have floated down to us, impaired, it may be, but always vivid, we discover that his wisdom was only a high spiritual faith and morality taught in visions and rhapsodies, and using numbers as symbols. | Was such wisdom new to Masonry? Had not Hermes himself been a hero of the order from the first, of whom we read in the Old Charges, in which he has a place of honor alongside Euclid and Py- thagoras? Wherefore go elsewhere than to Masonry itself.to trace the pure stream of Hermetic faith through the ages? Certainly the men of the Grand Lodge were adepts, but they were Masonic adepts seeking to bring the buried temple of Masonry to light and reveal it in a setting befitting its beauty, not cultists making use of it to exploit a private scheme of the universe.
1 Hermes and Plato, Edouard Schure.
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Who were those “men of intelligence” to whom Pike ascribed the making of the Third Degree of Masonry? ‘Tradition has fixed upon Desaguliers as the ritualist of the Grand Lodge, and Lyon speaks of him as “the pioneer and co-fabricator of symbolical Masonry.” * ‘This, however, is an exag- geration, albeit Desaguliers was worthy of high eulogy, as were Anderson and Payne, who are said to have been his collaborators.* But the fact is that
1 History of the Lodge of Edinburgh.
2 Steinbrenner, following Findel, speaks of the Third Degree as if it were a pure invention, quoting a passage from Ahiman Rezon, by Lawrence Dermott, to prove it. He further states that Anderson and Desaguliers were “publicly accused of manufacturing the degree, which they never denied” (History of Masonry, chap. vii). But inasmuch as they were not accused of it until they had been many years in their graves, their silence is hardly to be won- dered at. Dr. Mackey styles Desaguliers “the Father’ of Modern Speculative Masonry,” and attributes to him, more than to any other one man, the present existence of the order as a living in- stitution (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry). Surely that is going too far, much as Desaguliers deserves to be honored by the order. Dr. J. T. Desaguliers was a French Protestant clergyman, whose family came to England following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He was graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1710, succeeding Keill as lecturer in Experimental Philosophy. He was especially learned in natural philosophy, mathematics, geometry, and optics, having lectured before the King on various occasions. He was very popular in the Grand Lodge, and his power as an orator made his manner of conferring a degree impressive — which may explain his having been accused of inventing the degrees. He was a loyal and able Mason, a student of the history and ritual of the order, and was elected as the third Grand Master of Masons in England. Like Anderson, his later life is said to have been be-
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the Third Degree was not made; it grew — like the great cathedrals, no one of which can be ascribed to a single artist, but to an order of men working in unity of enterprise and aspiration. The process by which the old ritual, described in the Sloane MS, was divided and developed into three degrees be- tween 1717 and 1730 was so gradual, so imper- ceptible, that no exact date can be set; still less can it be attributed to any one or two men. From the minutes of the Musical Society we learn that the Lodge at the Queen’s Head in Hollis Street was using three distinct degrees in 1724. As early as 1727 we come upon the custom of setting apart a separate night for the Master’s Degree, the drama having evidently become more elaborate.
Further than this the Degree may not be dis- cussed, except to say that the Masons, tiring of the endless quarrels of sects, turned for relief to the Ancient Mysteries as handed down in their tradi- tions — the old, high, heroic faith in God, and in the soul of man as the one unconquerable thing up- on this earth. If, as Aristotle said, it be the mis- sion of tragedy to cleanse and exalt us, leaving us subdued with a sense of pity and hope and fortified against ill fortune, it is permitted us to add that in
clouded by poverty and sorrow, though some of the facts are in dispute (Gould’s History of Masonry, vol. iii).
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simplicity, depth, and power, in its grasp of the realities of the life of man, its portrayal of the stu- pidity of evil and the splendor of virtue, its revela- tion of that in our humanity which leads it to defy death, giving up everything, even to life itself, rather than defame, defile, or betray its moral in- tegrity, and in its prophecy of the victory of light over shadow, there is not another drama known among men like the Third Degree of Masonry. Ed- win Booth, a loyal Mason, and no mean judge of the essence of tragedy, left these words:
In all my research and study, in all my close analysis of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, in my earnest deter- mination to make those plays appear real on the mimic stage, I have never, and nowhere, met tragedy so real, so sublime, so magnificent as the legend of Hiram. It is substance without shadow — the manifest destiny of life which requires no picture and scarcely a word to make a lasting impression upon all who can understand. To be a Worshipful Master, and to throw my whole soul into that work, with the candidate for my audience and the Lodge for my stage, would be a greater personal dis- tinction than to receive the plaudits of people in the the- aters of the world.
UNIVERSAL MASONRY
These signs and tokens are of no small value ; they speak a universal language, and act as a passport to the attention and support of the im- tiated in all parts of the world. They cannot be lost so long as memory retains tts power. Let the possessor of them be expatriated, ship- wrecked, or imprisoned; let him be stripped of everything he has got in the world; still these credentials remain and are available for use as circumstances require.
The great effects which they have produced are established by the most incontestable facts of history. They have stayed the uplifted hand of the destroyer; they have softened the asperities of the tyrant; they have mitigated the horrors of captivity; they have subdued the rancor of mal. evolence; and broken down the barriers of polit- ical animosity and sectarian alienation.
On the field of battle, in the solitude of the un- cultivated forests, or in the busy haunts of the crowded city, they have made men of the most hostile feelings, and most distant religions, and the most diversified conditions, rush to the aid of each other, and feel a social joy and satisfaction that they have been able to afford relief to a brother Mason. ' — BENJAMIN FRANKLIN