QUESTIONS ON "THE FIVE POINTS OF FELLOWSHIP"

THE BUILDER DECEMBER 1920

What is said of teaching by symbols? What method was used by the Jews
in learning the Ten Commandments? Give examples of the use of
symbolism in teaching at the present day outside of the Masonic Fraternity. 
Cite some of the things you have learned through this manner of teaching
in Masonry.  Describe some of the methods used in our kindergarten
schools.
 
Why did the old builders find it necessary to teach their Apprentices moral
truths? Where was the only place this information could be obtained? Why?

What plan did the master workmen adopt to convey this knowledge to the
Apprentices? What did the plumb symbolize? The level? The square? Give
other examples of builder's tools used as symbols.

What is Dr. Carr's theory of the origination of the symbol of the Five Points
of Fellowship? Have you ever heard any other theory? (A general question.)

What were the Five Points of Fellowship in the early Grand Lodge period?
Why is it presumed that the hand was superseded by mouth to ear or
cheek to cheek?

What does "foot to foot" mean? Should we withhold our assistance until it
is asked for? Has the lodge a responsibility in this connection, or does the
responsibility rest entirely upon ourselves as individuals? What did your
lodge do to help your brethren in the Army ?

How should we apply the second of the Five Points, "Knee to Knee"?

What is the admonition of the third of the Five Points, "Breast to Breast" ?

To what does the fourth point, "Hand to Back," refer?

What is the lesson to be learned from "Cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear"?

What would be the result if every Mason were to practice in his daily life the
precepts enjoined in the "Five Points of Fellowship" ?


SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

THE BUILDER:

Vol. II - The Five Points Symbolism. Poem, N.A. McAulay, p. 295.

Vol. IV - Symbolism of the Three Degrees, O.D. Street, p. 322.
Mackey's Encyclopedia:

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

PART VIII - THE FIVE POINTS OF FELLOWSHIP

One of the best devices for remembering a thing is to tie it up to some
familiar object.  Primitive peoples, who had few or none of the contrivances
for preserving records, such as writings, pictures, etc., habitually made use
of this method.  For example, the Jews used to learn the Ten
Commandments by linking each one to a finger.  By the same process, it
is believed, the habit of numbering in tens came into habitual practice
through the ease with which counting could be done by help of the ten
fingers.  Even today, and in spite of the numberless artificial schemes now
in use to help memory, the ancient habits are still in vogue, as one may
learn by watching children at study.

This device for fixing a thing in memory, for making it take hold of the mind,
is one of the explanations, it is very probable, of the manner in which the
old builders symbolized the objects and practices of their art.  The guilds
had to teach the Apprentice simple truths and elementary morality, not only
because it was necessary that he be a good and well instructed man in
order to be an acceptable Mason, but also because there were few or no
public schools wherein the youth might learn such things.  If he was to
learn them at all he had to learn them in the guild.

Led by instinct or experience the master workmen hit upon the plan of
conveying this instruction by tying each separate truth or duty up to some
implement, or building part, or building process, with which the Apprentice
would come into contact almost every day. The plumb was used as the
symbol of uprightness, the level of fellowship, the square of right conduct,
and so on.

Bro. Dr. Thomas Carr, who has written so instructively of Operative Masonry
as it still exists, believes that it was in the methods for laying out the plan
of a building that we have the original symbol of the Five Points of
Fellowship.  He says that a point was fixed at the centre of the plan; that
by means of the 3, 4, 5 triangle a line was drawn out through each of the
four corners, thereby assuring that every corner would be a right angle; and
that the four lines and the central point became later the geometrical
symbol of the Five Points of Fellowship.

This may well have been the origin of the symbol but we know that at some
early day the five rules of fellowship became attached to the very different
symbolism of the limbs and organs of the body.  In the Grand Lodge
period it seems that the symbols were the hand, the foot, the knee, the
breast, and the back; later on, at least in America, the hand was omitted
and the mouth to ear, or cheek to cheek, substituted.  When this was done,
or by whom, or why, we can not know, but it may be guessed that the
change was made because the body symbols were so much more intimate
and vivid and easily remembered than the geometrical.  On this matter we
can only hazard a guess as is so often our alternative in matters having to
do with the history and development of the ritual.  Whatever may
have been the original symbolism of the five points, whatever may have
been the evolution of the body symbolism, as the matter now stands, we
have the rules of right fellowship linked with foot to foot, knee to knee,
breast to breast, hand to back, cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear, and it is
this present system that we must endeavour to understand.

"Foot to foot" means that we must ever be ready to go to our brother's help
in case he is in need of assistance.  It is not enough that we should be
willing that he seek our aid; we must seek him, if we learn that he stands
in want.  This applies to the lodges as well as to the member, and there are
few better reasons for pride in our Order than the swift, silent manner in
which it always flies to the brother in need.  During the recent war, many
of our lodges were engaged in sending help and cheer to soldier brethren
in the cantonments and even in the trenches of Europe; a splendid
interpretation given to the whole world of the meaning of foot to foot.

"Foot to foot that we may go,
Where our help we can bestow;
Pointing out the better way,
Lest our brother go astray.
Thus our steps should always lead
To the souls that are in need."

"Knee to Knee." Never are we more tempted to lapse into a selfish
individualism than in prayer, strange as it may seem; it is so easy, when
bowing before the All Father, to pour out our own confessions, our private
feelings, and desires! The very intimacy and secrecy by which prayer is
preserved from perfunctoriness and formality is itself one of the sources of
selfishness in it, because it tends to shut others from our thought.  Masonry
urges us to take our brother with us when we go to God in order that our
fellowship may be lifted into heaven itself and thereby be made even more
beautiful and divine.  If you would have a little book, reader, in which the
social uses of true prayer are sent forth out of a noble nature's own
experience, lay hold of "Letters to His Friends," written by that "Apostle of
Intercession," Forbes Robinson.

"Knee to knee, that we may share
Every brother's need in prayer,
Giving all wants a place,
Where we seek the throne of grace.
In our thoughts from day to day
For each other we should pray."

"Breast to breast." By this, as I understand it, a brother is not only
admonished to keep inviolate the secrets of his fellows but is also reminded
that fellowship is not transfigured into real friendship until it has been
carried into the heart.  To interpret fraternity in the terms of relief and aid
alone is to leave it too external, too much in danger of becoming a mere
matter of giving and taking.  Fellowship needs to become a matter of the
spirit, an intimate, emotional condition, which gives the brother a place in
one's thoughts and affections as well as a place beside one's body in the
lodge room.  This spiritualizing of fellowship includes, as a part of itself, that
guardianship of our brother's secrets, already, referred to, and effectively
described in another stanza of Bro. N.A. McAulay's poem, from which I
have been quoting:

"Breast to breast, to there conceal, 
What our lips must not reveal, 
When a brother does confide, 
We must by his will abide.
Mason's secrets to us known
We must cherish as our own."

"Hand to back." This undoubtedly refers to our duty of helping a brother to
carry his material burdens; may we not also make it refer to burdens of a
more intangible character? If we could take an X-ray photograph of what
is on his soul as well as on his back, how surprised we would often be!
Secret anxieties, blighted hopes, unspoken sorrows, nameless griefs, worry,
care, these are not visible, often, but they are always real, and nothing is
more helpful to a man than to share with him the burdens on his mind and
on his heart.

"Hand to back, our love to show
To the brother, bending low,
Underneath a load of care,
When we may and ought to share.
That the weak may always stand,
Let us lend a helping hand."

"Cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear." Often is real brotherliness best shown
in the manner in which loving deeds are done! Ostentation in offering help,
a too public parading of one's kindliness, a thoughtless, tactless,
blundering, obtruding one's self on another, all this may of itself hurt more
than it heals.  How delicate, how gracious, is that kindliness invoked by the
symbol of cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear! Such kindliness is as courteous
and sweet as the mercies of God.

"Cheek to cheek, or mouth to ear,
That our lips may whisper cheer,
To our brother in distress;
Whom our words can aid and bless.
Warn him if he fails to see,
Dangers that are known to thee."

Such are the Five Points of Fellowship of which ours has been so brief an
exposition; may we not add to our thoughts this further suggestion, that the
very manner in which the five points are given to the candidate is in itself
significant of much? If we could only draw as close together in mind and
heart as are the bodies in that ceremony would not a great deal of our
unbrotherliness die of its own accord? Suspicion, jealousies, frictions,
misunderstandings, in how many cases do these spring from the distance
that we permit to lie between ourselves and our fellows! For is not this the
cause of much strife, - not that we are rich, or poor, or learned or ignorant,
but that we are strangers? To know a man better is almost always to love
him better.  And who will deny that it is only in such intimacy, wherein body
and mind are mingled, that we are permitted to hear that real Building Word
which is the great secret of Masonry? And who can doubt that in such a
fellowship we are translating into very life and deed the three great
principals of the Order, Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth?

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