QUESTIONS ON "THE EMBLEMS"
THE BUILDER APRIL 1921

THE HOUR GLASS

Recite the monitorial lecture on "The Hour Glass."

In what manner was the Hour Glass symbol commonly used by operative
Masons? Is the emblem a modern one? How was it used in funeral
ceremonies in early days? What is the lesson we should learn from
this emblem?

THE SCYTHE

Recite the monitorial lecture on the "Scythe."

Have you any answers to the questions asked by Brother Haywood in
this section of his paper?

EMBLEMS OF MORTALITY

Recite the ritualistic lecture on these emblems.

What does the First degree symbolize? The Second? What does the
drama of the Third degree symbolize? Did you realize the
significance of the Hiramic Legend the night you were raised? Was
its meaning entirely clear to you at that time, or did you have to
study it out later? 

SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

THE BUILDER:
Vol. IV. - Acacia, p. 323; Hour Glass, p. 325; Scythe, p.  325;
Setting Maul, p. 323.
 
Mackey's Encyclopedia
Acacia, p. 7; Hour Glass, p. 337; Scythe, p. 674, etc.

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

PART IX - THE EMBLEMS - CONCLUDED

THE HOUR GLASS 

IN WRITING of Masons' Marks, Brother Gould notes that one of the
commonest has ever been the figure of an Hour Glass.  "The Hour
Glass form, very slightly modified, has been used in every age down
to the present and in almost every country. According to some good
authorities, it was a custom (at the period immediately preceding
the era of Grand Lodges) to inter an Hour Glass with the dead, as
an emblem of the sands of life having run out." What could more
clearly prove the hold which this simple eloquent symbol has ever
had on the imagination of man? "The sands of life! they are swiftly
running away.  Be up, mortal, and about your task.  Soon the night
cometh when no man can work.  In the grave man will seek him out no
more inventions; what you do you must do while it is still called
Today!" Such is the message of the Hour Glass, too simple to need
any interpreter.  He who has learned how to transform time into
life, how to make the years leave behind them that which perishes
not, who lives the Eternal Life in the midst of time - such a one
has learned the lesson of the Glass.

THE SCYTHE

If the hour Glass is the symbol of the fleetingness of a mortal
life in which all do fade as doth the leaf, in which the sands are
ever running out, the Scythe is the figure of Time which is itself
that stream in which the sands are borne along.  Time! What a
mighty theme! The libraries of the world could not hold the books
that might be written about this eternally fascinating, eternally
elusive mystery! least of all would it be possible in a page or two
to capture its secret, so infinite are the suggestions of one small
symbol in Masonry's House of Doctrine.

Time is ever with us, flowing through our minds as the blood
courses through our veins, yet does it mystify us; and the more
thinking we do, the more mysterious does it become.  We divide it
into Past, Present, and Future, but what is the Past? has it ceased
to exist? If so, why does it continue to influence us; if it
continues to exist why do we call it the Past? What is the Future?
Is it something already made, awaiting us Out There as the land
waits for its explorer? What is the Present? We feel that it exists
said "Now" it is still future; the moment I have said it, it
belongs to the past. How can one's mind lay hold of that which is
always becoming but never is? If one's mind can not apprehend it
how can it be said to exist? It is such puzzles as these that have
led our most opulent minds to despair of ever surprising its secret
from it.

Nevertheless, Time is here, a part of the scheme of things, for
good or for bad; indeed, it seems to be the very stuff of life
itself, as Bergson has shown so convincingly in his "Creative
Evolution." Existence itself is a process of duration and man
begins to die the moment he is born.

The stately solemn words of the Lecture, offered in elucidation of
the symbol, leaves the mind saddened, and weighted, with a sense of
the frailty, or even futility, of life.  Wm. Morris, who is in so
many ways the poet of the Builder, felt in the same way about it. 
All through his pages one feels its presence like a shadow, against
which life's little events become etched into brighter relief, so
that the little amenities of the day became all the dearer in that
they flutter so fragilely over the abyss of eternity, all the more
precious because "the sweet days die."
 
But there is no need that we be shadowed by the sadness-sweetness
of this melancholy.  Time is a part of the scheme of things, it is
the very form of life, so that he who accepts life must also accept
Time and look upon it as friend and ally rather than enemy.  Time
helps to solve our problems, assuages our griefs, and always does
it carry us farther into the strange advantages of existence.  The
most triumphant minds have trusted themselves to it, as a child to
its mother, learning how to transform it into ever richer life, not
lamenting the past, nor impatient for the future, but living in an
Eternal Now which must be such Time as heaven knows.  "Man
postpones or remembers," complains Emerson; "he does not live in
the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless
of the riches which surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the
future.  He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with
Nature in the present above time!

"Great souls live many an eon in Man's brief years,-
To him who dreads no spite of Fate or Chance,
Yet loves the Earth, and Man, and starry spheres,
Life's swiftness is the pulse of life's romance;
And,when the footsteps fall of Death's advance
He hears the feet; he quails not, but he hears."

EMBLEMS OF MORTALITY

It is above all things fitting that the ritual which began with the
candidate's birth into the world of the lodge should end by
bringing him to that death which is but a larger birth into the
Grand Lodge above; thus does our sublime symbolism, like the sky,
gather all things into its embrace and overarch the end as well as
the beginning.  So also is it fitting that the ritual throws about
the instruments and trappings of the grave the memories of the
slain Master, thus reminding us that death may be transfigured by
a great soul into a paean and a triumph.

To die is as natural as to be born.  Death is no interloper in the
universe, but one with its laws and its life; in truth, it is
itself the friend and servant of life in that it keeps fresh the
stream and removes the out-worn and the old "lest one good custom
should corrupt the world." The very act of death proves this, for,
however much we shrink from its approach, we yield peacefully to it
when it comes.  Of this all our physicians testify, as witness
these words from one of the noblest of them, Dr. Osler:

"I have careful notes of about five hundred death-beds, studied
particularly with reference to the modes of death and the
sensations of the dying. Ninety suffered bodily pain or distress of
one sort or another; eleven showed mental apprehension; two
positive terror; one expressed spiritual exaltation; one bitter
remorse.  The great majority gave no sign one way or another; like
their birth their death was a sleep and a forgetting."

Natural as it is, death will ever remain solemn, and even sad, not
only because of what comes after, or "because of the body's
masterful negation," but because, as the Lecture reminds us, the
day of death is a kind of judgment day, for it brings to an end and
sets a lasting seal upon, the life of a man.  The world with its
problems, its imperious needs, its gray tragedies, and ancient
heart-breaks, is left behind; the man's career is ended, and the
influences of his life, the harvest of his deeds - all these are
now taken from his control. What he has done he has done, and death
places it beyond his changing.  Surely, it must be an awful thing
for a human being to realize at the last that, so far as he has
been concerned, there is less happiness, less love, less kindliness
and honour among men than before he entered life. To so live in the
midst of this mystery-haunted world, to so work among the winged
days that little children may be happier, youth more joyous,
manhood more clean, and old age less lonely; to so live that men
will hate less and love more, be honourable in public dealings as
in private acts, create more than destroy; to so live that the
great Kingdom of Brotherhood may be brought near and man be bound
closer to man, and woman closer to woman; that it is to be a Mason!

