THE BUILDER MARCH 1917


GEOMETRY OF GOD: A MASONIC SERMON

BY BRO. JOSEPH FORT NEWTON

"According to the measure of man, that is of the angel." Rev. 21:17

FEW realize the service of the science of numbers to the faith of
man in the morning of the world. It was almost his first hint of
law and order in life when he sought to find some kind of key to
the mighty maze of things. Living in the midst of change and
seeming chance, he found in the laws of numbers a path by which to
escape the awful sense of life as a series of accidents in the
hands of a capricious Power. Surely it was not unnatural that a
science whereby men obtained such glimpses of unity and order in
the world should be sacred among them, imparting its form to their
faith. Having revealed so much, numbers came to wear mystical
meanings in a way quite alien to our prosaic habit of thinking--
faith in our day having betaken itself to other symbols.

One of the first men to follow this hint was Pythagoras, of whom we
know so little and would like to know so much. He was a lofty and
noble figure, albeit half-hidden in myth, and only a few of his
words have floated down to us. He saw in all the multiplicity of
experience, to which Heraclitus had borne witness, a rhythmic
march--a movement, but with disciplined step and the reasonable
soul of music in it. One of his few sayings that remain sums up his
vision: "All things are in numbers, the world is a living
arithmetic in its development--a realized geometry in its repose."
Take a snowflake and look at it under a glass, and you will see
what filled that ancient thinker with wonder. It is an exquisite
example of the geometry of God--squares, circles, triangles,
pentagons, hexagons, parallelograms, more exact and delicate than
the deftest hand could trace. Throw a stone into a still sheet of
water, and immediately there arises an ever-widening series of
concentric circles. The mountains in their strength stand fast
forever, held in their places by a parallelogram of forces, and the
stars swing round their vast orbits as noiselessly as a dewdrop is
poised on a flower.

Such is the structure of the universe, and it is no wonder that
Pythagoras saw in these signs and designs, everywhere present, the
thought-forms of the Eternal Mind; else they would not be the
natural, selfsought forms of matter. Nature is a realm of numbers,
and the frolic architecture of a snowflake is a lesson in geometry.
Music moves with measured step, using geometrical figures, and
cannot free itself from numbers without dying away into discord.
From Pythagoras this insight passed to Plato, whose opulent genius
gave eloquent exposition to the Doctrine of Numbers. When asked by
a pupil what God does, he replied, "God geometrizes continually,"
and he was often wont to say that Geometry, rightfully understood,
is the knowledge of the Eternal. Over the porch of his Academy at
Athens he inscribed the words, "Let no one who is ignorant of
Geometry enter my doors," meaning that his teaching rested upon the
science of numbers. What Plato and Pythagoras saw modern science
confirms in myriad ways, as we may read, for example, in the
researches of Henri Fabre. In the last chapter of his book on "The
Cufic of the Spider," he wrote:

"Geometry, that is to say, the science of harmony in space,
presides over everything. We find it in the arrangement of a
fir-cone, as in the arrangement of an Epeira's living web; we find
it in the spiral of a snail shell, in the chaplet of a spider's
thread, and in the orbit of a planet; it is everywhere, as perfect
in the world of atoms as in the world of immensities. And this
universal geometry tells us of a Universal Geometrician, whose
divine compass has measured all things."

How interesting it is, revealing the infinite ingenuity of the
Divine imagination and the measured movements of its labors.
Naturally we find hints of this science in the Bible, in which
certain sacred numbers recur, indicating words, suggesting
thoughts, and revealing truths. Nowhere is this more manifest than
in the book of the Apocalypse, which, instead of being a series of
clouded and confused visions, is a work of spiritual mathematics.
In that book Three is the signature of Deity. Four indicates the
world of created things. Seven denotes peace and covenant, while
Ten is the symbol of completeness. Even numbers symbolize earthly
things, odd numbers heavenly things, and the odd and even added
unite the two. With this ancient science in mind, the vision of the
City of God, with its geometrical design, takes a new meaning,
albeit we should add to it the vision in the prophecy of Zachariah
in which the young man is told that the holy city is not to be
measured in cubits of human reckoning. Some hint of the paradox of
the measurable and the immeasurable must have been in the mind of
the Seer of Patmos, as if some one had asked him how our earthly
cubits can form a calculus for that which knows not the gauge of
time or space. Hence his parenthesis, to resolve the doubt,
"according to the measure of man, that is, of the angel."

Man is a citizen of two worlds, but he has no skill to realize the
world of spirit apart from the aid of the world of sense. If he
asks, wistfully, about the life to come, the only answer is one
expressed in the images and colors of the life that now is. As
often as he tries to ponder, reverently, what is the essential
nature of God, he finds himself thinking of the Eternal in terms of
those moral qualities which he sees, dimly enough, in the noblest
men. He cannot help himself; there is no other way for him to
think. Truth, justice, mercy, goodness in man must be of the same
nature as truth, justice and goodness in God, however they may
differ in degree, else they mean nothing to us. Long ago Ovid said
that "our measure is in our immortal souls," and our faith not less
than our philosophy rest upon the fact that there is an angel in
man, something akin to the Eternal, making our highest thought and
vision valid. No doubt that was what Plato meant when he said that
by the art of measurement the soul is saved-- that is, by measuring
up to the Angel within us we attain to the truth; by reading the
reality of life through the highest, we learn its meaning and
value. If so, we have our marching orders and the path of
attainment is made plain even to the humblest, and no one need err
therein or lose his way.

Just as in nature, from snowflake to star certain designs are found
everywhere--circles, cubes, triangles --so, among all races and in
all ages, certain ideas, ideals, faiths and hopes are held and
trusted. Socrates made the discovery--one of the greatest ever
made--that humanity is universal. By asking questions. which was
the business of his life, he found that when men, whether they be
artists or artisans, think round a problem and go to the bottom of
it, they disclose a common nature and a common system of truth.
After this manner the concensus of human insight, thought and
experience confirms the fundamental truths of faith, like a problem
of geometry, and we are justified in taking these basic ideas as
the thought-forms of the Eternal Mind reflected in the mind of man.
There is also a moral geometry which works itself out in the same
way, tested by age-long and sorrowful human experience. Every evil
way has been so often tried, that when we see a lad start along a
dark path of evil doing we know what the result will be. No prophet
is needed to predict the final issue; it is a problem in geometry.
As David Swing said, in his noble sermon on "The Idealist," writing
in his calm and simple manner:

"Some speak of ideals as if they were mere dreams. On the opposite
all high ideals are only life-like portraits seen in advance. It
would be much more true to affirm that ideals are the most accurate
results reached by the most painstaking calculations. It stands
much in their favor that they have come not from the brains of the
wicked, but from the intellects that were the greatest. The
greatest men of each age have pleaded for Liberty, because only the
greatest minds can paint in advance the picture of a free people.
Many nations are in the dust and mire today, because they have no
minds great enough to grasp a divine ideal. Instead of being a
romance, a noble ideal is often the long mathematical calculation
of a mind as logical as Euclid. Idealism is not the musings of a
visionary; it is the calm geometry of life."

For the rest, let us consider in a practical way the geometry of
manhood, its proportions and dimensions. Like the Holy City, which
the Seer saw descending from heaven, its length and breadth and
height must be equal, as Phillips Brooks taught in his great sermon
on "The Symmetry of Life,"--which his church asked him to repeat
ever so often. The basis of the triangle of character--that is to
say, the length of a man, the extent of his influence and power, is
a matter of morality. Purity is the first measure of a man. Lacking
a certain simple, sturdy, homely moral quality, he is a man only by
the accident of his shape, though he have the learning of Bacon,
the grace of Chesterfield, and the eloquence of Webster. Morals are
ever the boundaries of liberty and the primary dimensions of
manhood. Honesty, purity, truthfulness--nothing can take their
place, and without them religion is either a superstitution or a
sham. A pure heart may sanctify a creed, but a creed, however true
it may be, must bear moral fruit before it can sanctify a life. To
give morality any other than the first place is to invert the order
of life and upset all its values. It is the foundation of character
and of society.

But a man may be moral, and yet mean. He may be clean, but cruel;
righteous, but uncharitable; truthful, and yet narrow, bigoted and
hard. He may throw a poor family out of his house for lack of rent,
and in so doing be honest--and inhuman! If there is anything worse
than the wrongs wrought by wicked men, it is the evil done by good
men. That which gives beauty, breadth and mellowness to life,
melting our morality into goodness, is sympathy. And so to purity
we must add pity. Justice runs lengthwise of life, but mercy is
width, and is an evidence of nobility, of refinement, of
graciousness of spirit. Lacking it, we have a Calvin in the church
consenting to the death of Servetus because of a difference of
dogma, and a Jaubert in fiction pursuing like a sleuth hound the
weary, tangled and sorrowful steps of Jean Valjean. Man is akin to
the animal, but God put into his heart an alabaster box of pity out
of which, when once it is opened, come the amenities of life, its
courtesies, its graces, and those extensions of sympathy which it
is the mission of culture, not less than of religion, to promote.
And tolerance, too, since heaven is only a village if it is made of
only those thinkers who come always to the truth. Blessed be this
broad and sunny sympathy in which bigotry and cynicism melt away
and reveal to us the measure of man, that is of the angel that is
in him.

There is yet another measure of manhood, what William James called
"that altogether other dimension of existence," so often forgotten
in our day. Some, to be sure, regard it as a kind of fourth
dimension, a thing which you may argue exists, but which we can
never realize. Not so. No Mason, at least, can think so. It is a
natural, normal development of man, without which his life lacks
symmetry and is a thing unfinished and imperfect. Call it a
mystical faith, if you will, from it we derive most of our ideal
impulses, our aspirations that transcend the merely sensible and
understandable world. From beyond ourselves comes that ray of white
light which can brighten the pale moonlight into a glowing
sunlight, give to the light of the sun a sevenfold brightness, and
glorify all common things--as De Hooge lets the sunlight fall on
the rubbish of a back yard and wakens in us a thrill of joy and
wonder.

Men must seek the heights of being, must be tall of soul as well as
broad, if they are to see life in the large. Altitude of mind gives
new proportions and perspectives, and shows that many things of
which men are wont to make much are insignificant, and that other
things, like a cup of cool water offered a Brother, are of eternal
moment. It is when we add this third dimension that we see that
men, when measured by the Angel in him, is immeasurable. Man is the
measure of all things, said an ancient sage; but man himself, in
the higher reaches of his being, cannot be measured. He is like an
inlet of the sea. Looking landward, it is limited; looking seaward,
it is linked with the infinite. "I think God's thoughts after him,"
said Kepler, as he looked through his glass into the sky, which is
true of all high human thinking, all noble living, all
upwardleaping aspiration. Truly, He that made us hath set eternity
in our hearts, and restless we are until we find our rest in
reunion with His will in which is our peace.

Let us strive, then, to unite purity, pity and prayer in our lives,
revealing the length and breadth and height of life. Also, let us
judge life and our fellows by the Ideal of the Angel, that so, at
last, when we are tested by the measure of the Angel--that is, by
the Angel of Death--we may be found to have attained, in some
degree, to the measure of the stature of true manhood. And by as
much as we have failed, by so much let us trust the mercy of God
which is without measure and knows no end--

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.


PEACE AND WAR

Both peace and war are noble or ignoble according to their kind and
occasion. No man has a profounder sense of the horror and guilt of
ignoble war than I have. I have personally seen its effects, upon
nations, of unmitigated evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as
much pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as any of those
whom you will hear continually declaiming in the cause of peace.
But peace may be sought in two ways. That is, you may either win
your peace, or buy it--win it, by resistance to evil--buy it, by
compromise with evil. You may buy your peace with silenced
consciences. You may buy it with broken vows--buy it, with lying
words--buy it, with base connivances--buy it, with the blood of the
slain, and the cry of the captive, and the silence of lost souls--
over hemispheres of the earth, while you sit smiling at your serene
hearths, lisping comfortable prayers evening and morning, and
muttering continually to yourselves, "Peace, peace," when there is
no peace; but only captivity and death, for you, as well as for
those you leave unsaved--and yours darker than theirs.

I cannot utter to you what I would in this matter; we all see too
dimly, as yet, what our great world-duties are, to allow any of us
to try to outline their enlarging shadows. But think over what I
have said, and in your quiet homes reflect that their peace was not
won for you by your own hands; but by theirs who long ago jeoparded
their lives for you, their children; and remember that neither this
inherited peace, nor any other, can be kept, but through the same
jeopardy. No peace was ever won from Fate by subterfuge or
agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which
we shall win by victory over shame or sin--victory over the sin
that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For many a
year to come, the sword of every righteous nation must be whetted
to save or to subdue; nor will it be by patience of others'
suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you will ever draw
nearer to the time when the great change shall pass upon the iron
of the earth--when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks; neither shall they learn war
any more. --Ruskin.

