THE BUILDER JULY 1925

The Design of the Masonic Institution

By BRO. LOUIS BLOCK, P. G. M., Iowa

THERE is no man who does, not now and then keenly realize how
greatly he needs to know what those things really are with which he
has most commonly to do.

Most of us are too often inclined to be content with the outward
seeming, the mere surface of things. Or we may be satisfied to
accept what someone else tells us about a thing, and to let it go
at that. We are all pretty apt to take things pretty much for
granted and to saunter along our easy way until some new experience
strikes us wide-awake to the fact that there is something beneath
and beyond, that until then we had never known was there.

The Mason who has thought the least about the matter is the one who
is the readiest to tell you he knows all about what Masonry means,
what it stands for, what it is really trying to do.

If old Socrates should come back to earth and go poking around
among us seeking light on the question "What Is Masonry?" he would
surely and quickly accumulate such a vast variety of answers as
would drive him to some solitary corner in the effort to recover
from his stupefaction and confusion of mind.

There be far too many Masons who have either never penetrated to
the heart and core of the matter or have long ago forgotten what
they found at the journey's end.

Then again all of us tend to get "rusty", not only in the Ritual,
but, what is far more to be regretted, in the great themes the
Ritual strives to teach.

In fact there is no one of us, from the youngest Entered Apprentice
in the Northeast corner of the lodge to the grey-beard who bears
the Great Lights in funeral procession, who would not be greatly
helped his taking his Masonry out, now and then, dusting it off,
and taking a good square look at it in the effect to learn what it
really means.

Now there may be many places to which one might go for his answer
to the question "What Is Masonry?" but it would seem that the
obvious place to go wo be to the Institution itself. It has its own
clear-cut positive, out-spoken answer to this question, an answer
as ancient as the Institution itself. Listen:

"The design of the Masonic Institutivn is to make its votaries
wiser and better and consequently happier."

WHAT DOES IT MEAN ?

You've heard that before ? Of course, over and o again.
But just what does it mean?

Now, before we go on to try to answer this question let us recall
to mind a certain curious fact about Masonry, and that is that it
deals with the propound of truths of a nature so peculiar as to
permit of their being promulgated only in a certain singular way.
The principles of Masonry are living, breathing things, and cannot
be presented with the cold, hard-worded precision of mathematical
propositions. Masonry scarce ever comes directly at a subject. She
travels toward her goal by indirection, suggests by symbol and
propounds by parable. The teachings of Masonry are of such a nature
that they can properly be presented only by what Whittier so
eloquently calls

"The picture writing of the world's grey seers 
The myths and parables of primal years."

The thoughtful observer soon comes to see that there is nothing
obvious about the teachings of Masonry and that Albert Pike was for
the most part in the right in constantly insisting that "the symbol
conceals".

Nevertheless it is also true with Masonry as it is with life and
religion that

"Answering unto Man's endeavor
Truth and Right are still revealed."

Is it not true that we value the treasures of Masonry all the more
because they do not lie openly on the surface, and can only be
acquired by earnest thought and persistent effort ?

We should rejoice and be glad to realize that real Masonic
revelation comes only as the result of reflection, oft renewed, and
many times repeated. It is this very fact that makes "the mystic
art" worthy a man's mind.

"To make its votaries wiser and better." Even so, but how ?

Well, first by teaching them to see and to think. To see by holding
before their eyes puzzling emblems and stirring within them a
desire to see beneath the surface to the treasure of truth that
lies hidden within. Somehow we are all so built that things that
are simple and shallow don't hold us long. But face us with a
puzzle, a mystery, a thing that defies our penetration and
challenges our power of solution, and at once our interest is
keenly aroused.

It was a crying curiosity that caused most of us to join the lodge.
We were crazy to know the secrets, and in due time they were told
to us.

Yet, is that true ? Were they really told to us ? Don't they still
remain secrets for most of us, so far as their real worth and
meaning is concerned?

DO WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT?

The while we so glibly bandy about among us sign and symbol, token
and word, due guard and dialogue, do we really know what we are
talking about? Sometimes I think we are like a parcel of parrots
persistently pattering about our "perfect points," both pedal and
pectoral, yet of whose real meaning we have no perception.

Does this proposition seem preposterous to you ? Well, the next
time you foregather with a brother, dig into him, demand to know
what this, that, and the other sign and symbol truly mean, and see
how quickly he cries, "Oh, Min !" and hoists the grand hailing sign
of distress.

Here is what actually happened not long since in a certain lodge
not a thousand miles from here. The Grand Master was paying the
lodge an official visit. He had been duly received and welcomed,
conducted to the East, and seated beside a leading Past Master of
the lodge. He returned the gavel to the Master of the lodge and the
work proceeded.

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth--"

Said the G. M. in an undertone to the P. M.: "Listen to this, for
I want to ask you some questions." "All right." . . . "in the day
when the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong men
shall bow themselves--"

G. M. to P. M. "What does that mean?"
P. M. to G. M. "I don't know."
. . . "and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the
doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding
is low--"
G. M. to P. M. "What does that mean?"
P. M. to G. M. "I don't know."
. . . "and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper
shall be a burden, and desire shall fail."
G. M. to P. M. "What does that mean?"
P. M. to G. M. (irritably). "I don't know. I never did know ! I
haven't the slightest idea what any of it means !"

Many, many times he had recited it--many more he had heard it
recited. Yet to him it meant no more than does a Latin prayer to a
worshipper who knows no tongue but English, no more than does the
whirr of the Chinese prayer-wheel to the coolie who can't read.

Now, the writer has concerned himself with things Masonic from "the
days of his youth" until now when for him Life's descending sun has
begun to sink in the West. He has striven earnestly to realize the
meaning the immortal words of that solemn recitative and believes
he has some small conception of their significance. Yet he knows
full well that even he has fallen far short of exhausting their
meaning and feels sure the day will never come for him when he can
truly say that he has sucked their sweetness dry.

Verily we need all of us to be initiated again, this time not of
words, but of "water and the spirit", in order that we may realize
that Masonry is after all never a thing "terrestrial", nor even yet
verbal, but ever more "celestial" and eternally spiritual.

Near the close of a long and eventful Masonic life, after years of
painstaking research and study, after many months of meditation,
Bro. Albert Pike, of revered and sainted memory, put into these
careful considered words his conclusion as to the meaning of
Masonry:

"Masonry is a continuous advance by means of the instruction
contained in a series of degrees, toward the Light, hy the
elevation of the celestial, the spiritual, and the divine, over the
earthly, sensual, material and human in the nature of man."

Yea, my brother, it is that, just that, and nothing less than that,
that is "the design of the Masonic institution", for only so can a
man be made "wi,ser, better and, consequently, happier".

