Chapter 1
Section 1
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'^ 25 i
REV. JOSEPH FORT NEWTON
The Ministry of Masonry
Rev. Brother Joseph Fort Newton. D. Utt
Gmul Ghapbun, GniMi Lodge of lowm, A. F. aad A. M., and
QwpUin of Mt Hermoa Lodvo, No. 263. of Codor lUipids
An address delivered before the
Grand Lodge of Iowa, A. F. and A. M.* at die
Seventieth Annual Commtoiicalaoli
held at Council Bluffs
June tenth, nineteen hundred and thirteen
CEDAR RAPIDSw IOWA
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DtarnUBiniON
1913
c^ THE MINISTRY OF MASONRY
^ P(ut Orand Magter Block, Memhera of the Orand Lodge of
^ Iowa, Ladies, and Oentlemen:
^ i^BK^ OMETHINO in this eoem, something in the
^ «^Bk words of my dear friend, appeals to me very
deeply. So gracious a greeting evokes feelings
/
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9
/
L* .
/
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beyond my words, and I nnderstand what Lord
Tennyson mnst hare felt when, looking out npon the sea and
to its voices, he cried :
I would that some tongue oonld utter
The thoughts that arise In ma."
Once npon a time^ as my friend has said, I tried to talk to
yon as best I conld on The Mission of Masonry, its faith, its
philosophy, its demand for freedom, and its plea for nniversal
friendship.
But the more I brood over the mystery of this order, its his-
toiy, its genius, its possibilities of ministry to the higher hu-
man life, the more the wonder grows, the higher the horicon,
and the longer the vistas that unfold. Let me beseech you,
then, to lend me your hearts while I tell you a little more of
the meaning of Masoniy as it has grown up in my heart.
iStudying Masonry is like looking at a sunrise; each man who
looks is filled with the beauty and glory of it^ but the splendor
is not diminished.^ Over all alike its ineffable wonder falls,
subduing the mind, softening the heart, and exalting the Ufa
L
The better to make vivid what lies in my heart, let me re-
call a scene from one of the great books of the world, War and
Peace, by Count Tolstoi — a name that should be spoken with
reverence wherever men assemble in the name good-wilL He
was^ if we except Lincoln, the tallest soul, the most pic-
289672
The Ministry of Masonry
turesque and appealing figure who walked under our human
sky in the last century. This book, the greatest of its kind
known to literature, makes one think of a giant playing with
mountains, tossing them to and fro as though they were toys;
80 powerful is it^ so vast in its sweep, so vivid in its panorama.
Its heroine is a whole nation — ^the beautiful, strange, tor-
mented land of Russia. We see its lights and shadows, its
wide expanse, and its quiet hamlets ; its people at work and
play, in peace and war — ^now hovering like a shadow on the
heels of their enemies, now fleeing in terror in the glare of
their burning cities. What a picture of the tumult of a
nation, and the vicissitudes of life, in the light the Napoleonic
invasion I
One of the arresting figures of the story is Count Pierre
Bezuhov— in whom Tolstoi has shown us one side of his own
soul, as in Prince Andre he has unveiled the other. Pierre
is the richest man in Russia, owning vast estates, including
both the land and the serfs on the land. Like so many young
noblemen of his day, he has lived a wild, sensual, dissolute
life, careless alike of the rights and wrongs of his fellows.
He was married to a beautiful, bewitching, sensual wcmiaa,
whose paramour he has just killed in a duel. On his way to
St. Petersburg he falls in with an old man, simply dressed,
but with the light of a great peace in his face. The stranger
addresses the Count and tells him that he has heard of his
misfortune, referring to the duel resulting in the death at his
hands of the lover of his wife. He is aware, too^ as he goes on
to say, of the wild, sin-bespattered life the Count has lived, of
his way of thinking, of his pride, indolence, and ignoranoa
The Count listened to these severe words, he hardly knew why
— ^perhaps because he heard in them an undertone of gymr
pathy, the accent of a great pity, and what he heard in the
voice he saw in the kindly face.
The Ministry of Masonry
On the hand of the old man the Count noticed a ring, and
in it the emblem of the order here aasembled. He adced the
stranger if he was not a Mason. Whereupon the old man,
looking fiearchingly into the eyee of the Oonnt^ said that he
belonged to that order, in whose name he eiztended to him the
hand of a brother man, in the name of God the Father. At
the mention of the name of Qod a smile curled on the lips of
the Count, who said :
"I ought to tell you that I don't believe in God." The old
Freemason smiled as a rich man, holding millions in his hand,
might smile at a poor wretch.
"Yes, you do not know Him, sir," said the stranger. "You
do not know Him, that is why you are unhappy. But He is
here. He is within me, He is in thee, and even in these scofBng
words you have just uttered. If He is not, we should not be
speaking of Him, sir. Whom dost thou denyt How came
there within thee the conception that there is such an incom-
prehensible Being?"
Something in the venerable stranger, who spoke earnestly,
as one who stood in the light of a vision, touched the Count
deeply, and stirred in him a longing to see what the old man
saw, and to know what he knew. Abject, hopeless, haunted
by an ill-spent life, with the blood of a fellow-man on his hand
— ^his eyes betrayed his longing to know God. Though he did
not speak, the kindly eyes of the stranger read his face and
answered his unasked question :
"He exists, but to know Him is hard. It is not attained by
reason, but by life. The highest truth is like the purest dew.
Can I hold in an impiire vessel that pure dew and judge of its
purity ? Only by inner purification can we know Him."
Finally, the old man asked the young nobleman if he would
not like to look into the mysteries of Masonry. Not so much
what the stranger had said as what he was — his gentle, au«
The Minislry of MMomy
store, benign spirit^ Uiat had in it aomething of the Father-
hood of God — made the Count say, '^es/' The stranger
asked him to report at a certain room in St Petersburg, where
he would be introdnoed to thoae high in authority among Free-
masons. Meanwhile, what the gently stem old man had said
sank into the soul of the hitherto heedless young nobleman;
and when he reported at the lodge room and was asked, as
every man is asked, the one indispensable question : ^^Do you
believe in GodP' — something deq>er than his doubts^ some*
thing higher than his scepticism spc^e within him, and he
answered, ^'Ycs/*
There follows a detailed description of his initiation, which
those who are not Masons may be curious to read. ITnf ortu*
nately, it tells them nothing of what takes place in a lodge
room on such occasions ; but it wiU show them the spirit that
lives and glows on the altar of Masonry. No one but a Mason
could have written it ; and while the chain of evidence is not
quite complete, I am safe in saying that, as with Count Pierre
in the story, so with Count Tolstoi himself, it was Masonry
which first lifted him out of the pit of atheism and sensualism,
set his feet upon the Bock of Ages, and started him toward the
cily of God. Does this not suggest to us the deeper meaning
of Masonry, its higher ministry, and the sereioe it may ren-
der to the inner life of man ?
IL
What is Masonry f What ia it trying to teach t Whatdoes
it seek to do! Above all, what can it do for the man who re-
ceives it into his heart, loves it> and lives in the light of it!
What profound ministry may it render to the young man who
enters its temple in the morning of life, when the dew is on
his days and the birds are singing in his heart! Let me try
to answer these questions this summer afternoon in the spirit
The Mimrirjf of M^Mnry
of Ooiint Tolstoi^ who must hereafter be numbered nitb tlioee
presets and bards — ^with peels like Goellie and BnTne^ mi^
sietana like MoKart^ patriots like Masdni and WaAingtcm —
who loved this historic order. Such names shine like slam in
the crown of humanity^ and none with truer lustre than Ihat
of Toktoi who was a teacher of purity, pity, and peace among
men.
Time out of mind Masonry has been defined as a system of
nuMrality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by ^ymbok. That
is so far true — ^f ar enough, indeed, to describe a world-en-
circling f eUowship and its far-ramifying influence. But it
is not of the extent of Masonry that I wish to speak this after-
lioon, but^ rather, of its depth — its serrice to the lonely inner
life 0f man where the issues of oharacter and destiny are de-
termined, for good or ill. No more w<»rthy purpose can in-
spire any order than the earnest^ active endeavor to bring men
— first the individual man, and then, so far as possible^ those
united with him — ^to a deeper, richer f ellewship with spiritual
reality. Since this is the purpose of Masonry, let us inquire
as to what it is, whence it came, and how it seeks to reach the
souls of men where the real battles of life are f oo^t^ now
with shouts of victory, now with sofas of def eel
It is true that Masonry is not a religion, still less a cult, but
is has religiously preserved some things of hi^est importance
to religion — ^amcmg them the right of each individual soul to
its own religious faith. Holding aloof from separate sects
and creeds^ it has taught all of them to respect and tolerate
eadi other; asserting a principal broader than any of them
— the sandily of the soul and the duly of every man to revere^
or at least to r^ard with charity, what is sacred to his fellows.
Our order is like the crypts undemeaih the old cathedrals — a
place where men of every creed, who long for something
deeper and truer, older and newer than they have hitherto
8 The Ministry of Masonry
known, meet and unite. Having put away childish things^
they find themselres made one by a piof onnd and dbild-Iike
f aithy each bringing down into that quiet crypt his own pearl
of great price —
^^The Hindu his innate disbelief in this world, and his un-
hesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist his percep-
tion of an eternal law, his submission to it^ his gentleness^ his
pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his sobriety; the
Jew his clinging, through good and evil days, to the one Qod,
who loveth righteousness and whose name is ^I AM;' the
Christian, that which is better than all, if those who doubt it
would only try it— our love of Qod, call Him what you will,
nianif ested in our love of man, our love of the living, our love
of the dead, our living and undying love. Who knows but
that the crypt of the past may yet become the church of the
future V
There have been great secret orders, like that represented
here today, since recorded history b^gan; and no man may
ever hope to estimate their service to our race. In every age^
in every civilized land — ^f rom the priests of Isis on yonder
side of the Pyramids, to the orders of Eleusis and Mithras in
Qreece and Bome-— we trace their silent, far-reaching influ-
ence and power. The Mysteries, said Plato, were established
by men of great genius who, in the early ages, strove to teadi
purity, to ameliorate the cruelty of the race, to refine its
manners and morals, and to restrain society by stronger bonds
than those which human laws imposa Cicero bears a like
witness to the hi^ aim of the same mystic orders in his day.
Thus in ages of darkness, of compleodiy, of conflicting peoples^
tongues, and faiths, these great orders toiled in behalf of
friendship, bringing men together under the banner of faith,
and training them for a nobler moral life.
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The Mmisify of Masonry 9
No mystery any l<mger attaehes to what those orders tau^t>
but only as to what particular rites, dramas^ and symbols were
used by them in their ceremonies. They taught faith in a God
above;, in the moral law within, heroic purity of soul, austeie
discipline of character, justice, piety, and the hope of a life
beyond death. Tender and toleraat of all faiths, they formed
an all-embraeing moral and spiritual fellowship which rose
above barriers of nation, race, and creed, satisfying the crav-
ing of men for unity, while evoking in them a sense of that
eternal mysticism out of which all religions yrere bom. Their
ceremonies^ so far as we know them, were stately and moving
dramas of the moral life and the fate of the soul. Mystery
and secrecy added impressiveness, and fable and enigma dis^
guised iu imposing spectacle the simple, familiar, everlasting
laws of justice, piety, and a hope of immortality. As Cicero
said, the initiates of the Mysteries not only received lessons
which made life tolerable, but drew from their rites happy
hopes for the hour of death.
Masonry stands in this tradition; and if we may not say
that it is historically related to those great ancient orders^ it
is their spiritual descendant, and renders the same ministry
to our age which the Mysteries rendered to the olden world.
It is, indeed, no other than those same historic orders in dis-
gnise; the same stream of sweetness and light flowing in our
day — ^like the fabled river Alpheus which, gathering the
waters of a hundred rills along the hillsides of Arcadia, sank,
lost to ligiht, in a chasm in the earth, only to reappear in the
fountain of Arethusa. Apart from its rites, there is no mys-
tery in Masonry, save the mystery of all great and simple
things. So far from being hidden and occult, its glory lies
in its openness, its emphasis upon the realities which are to
our human world what air and sunlight are to nature. Its
secret is of so great and simple a kind that it is easily over-
looked ; its mystery too obvious to be found out.