QUESTIONS ON "THE VITAL, PARTS OF THE BREAST" AND "THE
GOLDEN BOWL AND THE SILVER CORD"


At the time you received your Third degree what particular impression did
the method of reception make upon you? Did you look upon this particular
part of the ceremony as simply a matter of routine, or did you endeavour
to think out for yourself the true meanings of the words "friendship, morality
and brotherly love"?

Can a man who lives a secluded life apart from his fellows be said to know
the true meaning of happiness? Has the friendship of fellow-members of
your own lodge and those of other lodges with whom you have come into
close contact been a help to you since you became a member of the
Fraternity? Has this friendship caused you to change your opinion of any
of the fellow-members of your own lodge with whom you had but a
speaking acquaintance prior to your becoming a Mason? Has your own
mind been broadened by such friendships?

What is your conception of the word "morality" ? Has this word been
misused? Is a system of morality necessary to the advancement of the
human race? Why?

What is the derivation of the word "morality"? What was probably the sense
in which it was first used? What has it become to mean in Christian times?
What is "righteousness"? Give a few concrete examples of which you may
have knowledge.  What is "right"?

"How can brotherhood be possible among us men?" asks Brother
Haywood. What is his solution? What is our idea as to how it may be
accomplished?

What was the evident purpose of the men who introduced this reading at
this particular place in our ritual? What were your own feelings when the
words fell upon your ears for the first time during our ceremonies? Did they
portend at the time of anything that followed in the ceremonies?

What is the usually accepted interpretation of this passage of Scripture?

What is Brother Haywood's interpretation?

Have you ever heard an interpretation other than the two here given? If so,
what is it? 

SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

THE BUILDER:

Vol.  I "When the Almond Tree Blossoms," p. 138.

Mackey's Encyclopedia:

Brotherly Love, p. 121; Friendship, p. 286; Points of  Fellowship, p. 572-


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

PART II - RECEPTION - THE GOLDEN BOWL AND THE SILVER CORD

THE VITAL PARTS OF THE BREAST

Upon our entrance we were received in a manner peculiarly impressive; we
were told that as the vital parts of the body are in the breast so are the vital
things of the human world to be found in Friendship, Morality, and Brotherly
Love.  How vague are these words! We have rolled them around in our
mouths so much that they have become smooth as billiard bags; they have
been used so often for merely oratorical purposes that they have grown
nebulous and abstract; and because they have become smooth and vague
we are prone to let them slip through our minds without depositing their
meaning behind them, a thing fatal to an understanding of Masonry, the
essence of which lies in these three wonderful words.

Man is by nature a social being.  It has been proved that he can not exist
as a sane creature except he live among his fellows, for his very personality
itself is a social product; the language on his lips implies another to hear
and to understand; his emotions and affections seek another in whom to
find satisfaction.  Not until the individual has found other human individuals
who can feel with him, think with him, and act with him can he know the
meaning of happiness. But it is a part of the tragedy of our lives that we are
so clumsy in uncovering our own souls, and others are so inexpert in
understanding our secret feelings, that our fellowship is never complete, so
that the music of companionship is continually being disturbed by jangling
dissonances of misunderstanding.  With a friend, however, it is different; he
is one with whom we can live in harmony, as if the two lives could mingle
like two streams, his thoughts and our thoughts merging and the two spirits
living as one.  Such a union is one of the sweetest experiences in all the
world and he who has found his friend may well congratulate himself as
one who has discovered the pearl of great price.  Little wonder that our
prophets and seers have so often broken into rhapsody on this theme! that
our literature may count as its richest treasures such utterances as those
of Emerson, Black, Trumbull, Montaigne, Bacon and Cicero on this theme!

Morality has been stretched to cover so many meanings, it has been forced
into the support of so many conflicting meanings, and been made fellow
to so many crimes against reason, that we can hardly blame many for
refusing to discuss it or even to think of it.  But the word is necessary
because the idea of which it is the sign is a real and necessary idea. If men
misuse it there is all the more reason for our learning how to rightly use it.

What is morality? It is derived from a Latin word meaning "custom," and it
is probable that the Romans fast used it in the sense of living according to
the custom.  In Christian times a richer meaning was poured into it so that
it has come to mean "the life of righteousness." But what is righteousness?
It is living the right way, doing the light things, thinking the right thoughts,
a very Masonic behaviour.  But what is right? We might answer that
question in two ways; we might say that the right is that which gives us the
fullest, completest life, for it is the purpose of morality to give us life and
give it more abundantly; or, we might say that right is conformity to the law
of our being.  As the scientist seeks to learn the laws of nature and to
conform to them, so does a righteous man seek to discover the laws of his
own nature in order to conform to them; he obeys the laws of the body by
living clean and simply, he obeys the laws of the intellect by thinking facts
without prejudice or haste, and he obeys the laws of the heart by loving
only that which he finds to be good and true.

Of Brotherly Love much more might be said, though space may not permit,
especially that Brotherly Love which Masonry inculcates.  How can
brotherhood be possible among us men? We are all so unbrotherly, we are
so selfish, we are so quick to take or give offense.  The solution of this
troublesome problem lies in the fact that the one cure for unbrotherliness
is brotherliness.  We love our enemies that they may cease being enemies. 
We make friends in order to have friends.  Brotherliness is a creative force. 
Brotherhood is not a thing already made, it is a condition we must create,
so that the very presence of unbrotherliness is a challenge to brotherhood
to do its best. When our fellows in lodge act thoughtlessly toward us, and
bruise and hurt us, it is not for us to retaliate; insofar as we are true Masons
we shall love them even though they are not lovable; simply because the
only way in which we can make men lovable is by loving them.  Brotherly
Love, therefore, is a task, a kingly task, quite the greatest, the most
important, inside the whole compass of life.  Indeed, we may say that one
of the chief purposes of Masonry is to mobilize all men of good will in order
that they may help to brother the world into a world-wide brotherliness.

THE GOLDEN BOWL AND THE SILVER CORD

The sacred sentences which fall on the ears of the candidate as he makes
his mystic round are so heavy with poignant beauty that one hesitates to
intrude the harsh language of prose upon such strains of poetry, solemn
sweet.  We may well believe that the men who introduced the reading here
had no other thought than that the words might the better create an
atmosphere in which the coming drama of hate and doom might all the
more impressively come home to the heart of the participants. If such was
their purpose neither Shakespeare nor Dante could have found words or
sentiments more appropriate to the hour.  There is a music and majesty in
the twelfth Chapter of Ecclesiastes which leaves us dumb with awe and
wonder and our hearts open to the impressions of a tragedy along-side
which the doom of Lear seems insignificant and vain.

For generations the commentators of Holy Writ have seen in the allegory
of this chapter a reference to the decay of the body and the coming of
death; to them the golden bowl was the skull, the silver cord was the spinal
nerve, "the keepers of the house" were the hands, the "strong men" the
limbs; the whole picture is made to symbolize the body's falling into ruin
and the approach of death.  One hesitates to differ from an interpretation
so true in its application and so dignified by its associations.  But it must
be doubted whether the sad and disillusioned man who penned the lines
possessed either the knowledge of human anatomy implied by the old
interpretation or the intention to make his poem into a medical description
of senility.  A more thorough scholarship has come to see in the allegory
a picture of the honour of death set forth by metaphors drawn from an
Oriental thunderstorm.

It had been a day of wind and cloud and rain; but the clouds did not, as
was usual, dispense after the shower.  They returned again and covered
the heavens with their blackness.  Thunderstorms were so uncommon in
Palestine that they always inspired fear and dread, as many a paragraph
in the Scriptures will testify.  As the storm broke the strong men guarding
the gates of rich men's houses began to tremble; the hum of the little mills
wherewith the women were always grinding at eventime suddenly ceased
because the grinders were frightened from their toil; the women, imprisoned
in the harems, who had been gazing out of the lattice to watch the activities
of the streets, drew back into their dark rooms; even the revelers, who had
been sitting about their tables through the afternoon, eating dainties and
sipping wine, lost their appetites, and many were made so nervous that the
sudden twitting of a bird would cause them to start with anxious surprise. 
As the terror of the storm, the poet goes on to say, so is the coming of
death, when man "goes to his home of everlasting and mourners go about
the streets." Whatever men may have been, good or bad, death brings
equal terror to all.  A man may have been rich, like the golden lamp hung
on a silver chain in the palace of a king; he may have been as poor as the
earthen pitcher in which maidens carried water from the public well, or even
as crude as the heavy wooden wheel wherewith they drew the water; what
his state was matters not, death is as dread a calamity to the one as to the
other.  When that dark adventure comes the fine possessions in which men
had sought security will be vain to stay the awful passing into night.  "Vanity
of vanities; all is vanity." The one bulwark against the common calamity, the
Preacher urges, is to remember the Creator, yea, to remember Him from
youth to old age; to believe that one goes to stand before Him is the one
and only solace in an hour when everything falls to ruin and the very desire
to live has been quenched by the ravages of age and the coming of death.

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