QUESTIONS ON "THE TROWEL"

THE BUILDER JUNE 1920

In conducting the study meetings the Chairman should endeavour to hold
the discussions as closely as possible to the text and not permit the
members to speak too long at one time, or to stray onto another subject.

Whenever it becomes evident that a discussion is turning from the original
subject the Chairman should request the speaker to make a note of the
particular point or phase of the matter he wishes to discuss or inquire into,
and bring it up when the Question Box period is opened.

Have some brother recite the monitorial lecture on the Trowel as the
working tool of the Master Mason. Why is the Trowel most appropriate to
the Master Mason degree? What are the working tools of an Entered
Apprentice, and their uses? What are the working tools of a Fellow Craft,
and their uses? What is the function of the Trowel in the hands of a Master
Mason? Why is the Trowel most symbolic in the work of temple building?

Of what power may we consider the Trowel to be a symbol?

What do we say of men who lack unity in their makeup? Whence came the
word "character"? What is its present-day meaning? What may a man who
lacks character do to better himself ?

What can he use to accomplish this end?

How did the builders of ancient times lay out their building designs? How
and by whom was the degree work laid out in early English lodges? What
was the duty of the youngest Entered Apprentice after the conclusion of the
ceremony? How was the "plan of work" later displayed? What is the tracing
board of a degree? Are the tracing boards of the several degrees
represented in your lodge? How? Of what is the tracing board a symbol?

How would you answer Brother Haywood's question "What is the force that
can unite individual Masons into a unified and harmonious order"? What is
it that ties you to your fellow Masons? What is your conception of the
"Brotherhood of Man"?

SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

THE BUILDER:
Vol. I. - What is Masonry, p. 295. (Reference to the Trowel.)
Vol. II. - The Trowel, p. 335.
Vol. IV. - The Trowel, p. 38.

Mackey's Encyclopedia:

Trowel, p. 804 

THIRD STEPS
BY BRO.  H. L. HAYWOOD, IOWA

PART IV - THE TROWEL

This emblem is like a key; insignificant in itself it opens up matters of such
vast import that to pursue its teachings through all their ramifications would
itself require a book; consequently I can only hope to set down a few hints
of the richly various applications of this emblem.

There is no need to say that of all working tools it is most appropriate to
the Master Mason degree; it carries that significance upon its surface.  For
the Entered Apprentice, who can make only a beginning at the task of
shaping the ashlar, needs only the gavel and the gauge; the Fellow Craft,
to bring the stone into completeness of size and form, requires the plumb,
square, and level; the Master Mason's task is to set the finished stone in its
place, and bind it there, for which purpose the trowel is his most necessary
tool. Therefore the Master Mason has been given the Trowel as his Working
Tool because it is most symbolic of his function in the great work of Temple
Building; when that tool has done its work there is nothing more to do,
because the structure stands complete, a united mass, incapable of falling
apart; the stones which were many have now, because of the bonding
power of the cement, become as one stone.

If the stones represent individual men, and if the Temple represents the
Fraternity as a whole, it is evident that the Trowel is the symbol of that
which has power to bind men together. Therefrom arises the question,
What is this unifying power? Let us undertake to answer this question from
the several points of view of the individual, the Fraternity and the world at
large:

1. We very frequently meet with men who seem to lack unity in their
makeup; a spirit of disorganization or anarchy is at work in them so that
they seem to live  at cross-purposes with themselves.  What they know they
should do they do not, and many things which they do they do against
their own will. They may have personal force but it is scattered and their
lives never come to a focus. Of these men we say that they lack character
and we say right.  Character comes from a word that meant originally a
graving tool; after long use the name of the tool came to be applied to the
engraving itself, and thus the term has come to stand for a man whose
actions give one an impression of definiteness and clearcuttedness, like an
engraving. A man who lacks character is a blur, a confused and self-
contradictory mass of impulses and forces.  The one salvation for such a
man is to find some means of unifying himself, of using himself to some
purpose so as to arrive at some goal.

What can he use? We may answer, perhaps, that he can best use an ideal,
for an ideal is nothing other than a picture of what one wills to be which he
ever keeps before him, as an architect refers to his blue prints.  In short,
the man needs a plan to live by, a thing we have symbolized in our ritual
by means of the tracing board.

Before the time of the Reformation, builders did not use plans drawn to
scale as architects now do, but laid out their building design on the ground,
or even on the floor of the workshop or the lodge.  In early English lodges
this design was often drawn on the floor in chalk by the Master and the
youngest Entered Apprentice would erase it with mop and water at the end
of the ceremony; after a while, to make this labour unnecessary, the "plan
of work" was drawn on a permanent board which was set on an easel and
exhibited during the degree, as is still done in England.  The tracing board
of a degree, therefore, is the plan of work for that degree, drawn in symbols
and hieroglyphics, and the tracing board itself, as it stands in the lodge, is
a constant reminder to the Mason that, as a spiritual builder, he must have
a plan or an ideal for his ideal for his life; and when the Mason does live in
loyalty to an ideal he is a man of character; his faculties work in unison,
there is no war between his purposes and his behaviour, and he is able to
stand among his brethren as a complete temple.  Such a man has used a
trowel in his own life.

2. It is more difficult to answer the question, What is the force that can unite
individual Masons into a unified and harmonious order? but a practical
answer may be found by asking a further question, What is it that now
unites us, even if imperfectly? What is the cement? Perhaps we cannot
point to any one thing. When I inquire of my own heart what it is that ties
me to my fellow Masons I find myself thinking of many things.  There is the
sense of a wonderful history which links us up to unknown brethren who
lived generations ago; there is the symbolism of the Society, in which
precious truths and living philosophies have been poured as into golden
vases; there is the spirit which pervades the Order, a sense of oneness in
purpose and aims, of tolerance, of charity, of patience and forbearing; there
is also the remembrance of the obligation which I voluntarily assumed, and
which wove into my heart a silken thread, the other end of which is woven
into the hearts of my brethren; these, and similar influences, hold me to the
Craft now and ever shall, but how to sum them up in one word I know not,
except it be Brotherhood.  Brotherhood has suffered much from over-use,
from sentimentalism, and from oratory, but no other word can be found to
take its place. Therefore we may say that, so far as the Fraternity itself is
concerned, the trowel, and the cement spread on by the trowel, is the
sweet, pervasive, irresistible spirit and power of Brotherhood. True is it that 

"Fellowship is heaven
The lack of fellowship is hell."

3. If this be true we have already to hand an answer to our last question,
What power can unite the scattered peoples and nations of the earth,
especially in a time like this when they are more than ever sundered by
passion and by hatred? Surely, if the spirit and influence of Brotherhood
can call together two million men out of all classes and localities of America
and can bind them into the solidarity of a great unified Order, that same
power can accomplish similar results if applied to the world at large. 
Diplomats and politicians do not seem to believe it, the lords of industry do
not seem to believe it, but it is true nevertheless, trite as it may sound and
Freemasonry's benign genius of fraternity was never more badly needed
in the earth than just now.  Every device has been used to bind the peoples
together: force, money, fear, superstition, what not; let us hope that soon
or late the race will try the means proved so effective by more than two
hundred years of Freemasonry.

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