THE BUILDER November 1917
CORRESPONDENCE CIRCLE BULLETIN---No. 12
DEVOTED ORGANIZED MASONIC STUDY
Edited by Bro. Robert I. Clegg

This issue of the Correspondence Circle Bulletin concludes Section
"B" of our Bulletin Course of Masonic Study. With the December
issue we shall commence Section "C" of Ceremonial Masonry, which we
have called "First Steps." We feel certain that those Lodges and
Study Clubs which have followed us thus far through what we have
chosen to present as the fundamental facts concerning "The Work of
a Lodge" and the relations existing between "The Lodge and The
Candidate" will find the successive steps of the remaining study
even more interesting than those which have gone before. Doubtless
the interpretation which will be placed upon our ceremonies by us
will not be agreed to by all: but it will serve to form a basis for
discussion, at least. And, as always, we shall welcome your
questions and discussions in The Question Box, which now, more than
ever before, promises to be one of the most illuminating
departments of THE BUILDER.

(Note. The following article is one of a series prepared by the
Editor for reading and discussion in Lodges and Study Clubs. This
series is based upon the Society's "Bulletin Course of Masonic
Study." Each month we present a leading article supplemented by a
list of references on the same subject. In each month's issue, we
also append a column of "Helpful Hints to Study Club Leaders,"
which we hope will assist those already doing this work, and
inspire others to do likewise. This development is in line with the
Society's policy of stimulating active Masonic study.

We recommend that Lodges and Study Clubs use the current paper at
their meeting one month after it is received. This gives time for
careful study by the members; it also permits the preparation of
additional papers from the references. In the original presentation
of this paper, if it is read a paragraph at a time, and fully
discussed as you proceed, you will find that each member will get
more out of it. By this plan, the leader can bring out the
important points listed under "Helpful Hints," as you go along, and
the discussion will perhaps be more to the point than otherwise.

The Bulletin Course may be taken up at this point as profitably as
elsewhere. The previous lessons may be considered review work.
Mackey's Encyclopedia and the bound volumes of THE BUILDER remain
the necessary references; others will from time to time be given;
rare references will be reprinted in THE BULLETIN. YOUR LODGE can
undertake systematic Masonic study with small expense in dollars,
but large returns to your membership, if you will let us assist
you. Our "STUDY CLUB DEPARTMENT" is organized for that purpose.

Address Geo. L. Schoonover, Secretary, Anamosa, Iowa.)

THE LODGE AND THE CANDIDATE

Part III, THE DEGREES

BY BRO. ROBERT I. CLEGG
ENTERED APPRENTICE, FELLOW CRAFT AND MASTER MASON

WE may for our purpose define the word "degrees" as meaning the
steps, stations, stages, or grades of progress in a movement. The
several intervals on the scale of a thermometer are known as
degrees. The poet has pictured the ambitious as climbing a ladder,
and when the topmost round has been reached the climber turns his
back to the ladder, "scorning the base degrees by which he did
ascend." In no spirit of contempt do we Masons mention the degrees.
They are the divisions, distinct and different, by which the
candidate measures as by milestones the most important of the
periods of his preparation for the life of a Mason. They are not to
be scorned but treasured, followed and not forgotten.

The degrees of Freemasonry are many if we include all ceremonials
and instruction given exclusively to Masons. For our present
purpose we shall limit our study to the first three degrees assumed
or received by the candidate. These are the Entered Apprentice,
Fellow Craft, and Master Mason.

Of the history of these three degrees there is much yet to be
disclosed by the patient seeker after truth. We do not possess all
the information we desire. So little could be put lawfully into
print or writing that the available facts are few.

Following the organization of the Grand Lodge in 1717 we can
readily understand that a careful survey of the degrees of the
ritual would be made. That much at least we can guess by the
references made in the records. For instance, we note in the Book
of Constitutions issued under date of 1738 a mention of a condition
of things that could with equal truth be used today. The statement
is as follows: "a Prentice when of age and expert, may become an
Enter'd Prentice or a Free-Mason of the lowest degree, and upon his
due improvements a Fellow-Craft and a Master-Mason." Perhaps it is
not unfair to assume that here the word "Prentice" has the same
meaning as a duly qualified candidate ready for complete initiation
and record.

During the interval from 1717, when the Grand Lodge was organized,
to 1738 when the above Constitutions were issued, we find the
evidence of growing pains. Therefore there is less certainty about
the prevailing practice in the lodges. It is reasonable to believe
that the records show what had been adopted and made uniform but it
does not say when the lodges that had already been working that way
had first begun the practice. That is to say that in 1738 something
was announced as the common custom and lawful which previously
might long have been in use.

We must be very careful to draw a sharp distinction between the
time when certain lines of separation were made in the ceremonies
and that of the time when the ceremonies were first used. To divide
the ceremonies into sections may be of recent date but the
ceremonies themselves can on the other hand be of the greatest age.

It is also very easy to see that what may have been divided into
two parts or sections may again at a later date be divided into
three or even four or more stages or degrees. There is a very
strong probability that the substance of at least two degrees of
Royal Arch Masonry was at one time a part of the lodge ceremonies.
For the same reason we may conclude that if we find a period when
but two degrees are mentioned there is some ground for the belief
that what we now have in the three degrees was then conferred in
the two degrees. The same series of ceremonies may be divided
differently and yet be substantially the same instruction.

If this distinction is not properly recognized by the student of
Masonry he will be seriously led astray in studying the arguments
of the scholars of the Craft in regard to the early degrees.

My respect for the age of the Masonic "work" is not lightly founded
on mere assumption. The subject has been touched upon in these
papers and will arise for later inquiry. At present we may study
with profit the comments of Brother Robert F. Gould as given in a
paper read in 1890 on "The Antiquity of Masonic Symbolism." I will
quote from the proceedings of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of London.
He maintained "that in substance, the system of Masonry we now
possess--including the three degrees of the Craft--has come down to
us in all its essentials, from times not only remote to our own,
but also to those of the founders of the earliest of Grand Lodges."

We must also never forget that Masonry has carefully preserved in
the strictest secrecy all matters not proper to be written. There
is thus the greatest difficulty in dealing historically with
ritualistic questions.

We further find that documents were destroyed as is the fact told
of by Anderson in 1720 where he says that "at some private lodges
several very valuable manuscripts (for they had nothing then in
print) concerning the Fraternity, their Lodges, Regulations,
Charges, Secrets, and Usages . . . were too hastily burnt by some
scrupulous brethren that these papers might not fall into strange
hands."

There is no reason to doubt this. It is precisely what might be
anticipated. Many of the members in opposition to the change
brought about by the formation of the Grand Lodge would expect that
to establish such a body would result in the interference by some
officials with the written particulars, they might be taken out of
the control of the lodge, publicity perhaps would be given to them.
Not being sure of the attitude likely to be taken by the new body
on such questions there would be a strong temptation to destroy
what might otherwise go astray and out of the control of those who
thought so much of the possessions. There may also have been the
desire to thwart the efforts of those to whom the opposition was
unfriendly. However the facts may be we are possessed of little
data upon the subject.

Elias Ashmole has recorded in his Diary that he was made a
Freemason in October, 1646, at Warrington, England. Whatever the
ceremonies were and exactly the number of degrees conferred are not
stated. But there is nothing to show that in substance he failed to
receive what is given every Master Mason.

Much has been made of another reference to Masonry found in the
Diary of Ashmole. This refers to a far later period in his life
than the date of Ashmole's making as a Freemason. He tells us that
in 1682 he was summoned to a Lodge at Mason's Hall at London. To
use his own expression, he was the "Senior Fellow present."

A like term is used by Dr. Plot in the year 1686 in his work on the
"Natural History of Staffordshire." He says that Freemasonry was
spread more or less over all the nation, that persons of the most
eminent quality were members of the Fraternity, and that on their
admission to the society they were given a knowledge of some
"secret signes." Further on he says that if "a Fellow of the
Society" should receive one of these signs he would be obliged to
obey its message even if it meant he should come down from the top
of a steeple.

For that matter Plot speaks of the five or six required to form a
lodge and of the presentation of gloves --a real Masonic ceremony,
by the way--and of the custom of a banquet after an initiation.
Plot is evidently giving the facts as they might be known to the
general public at that time because he does not pose as a member of
the Craft. His testimony is therefore so much the more impartial
and interesting as to the general reputation of the Fraternity at
that date.

But let us not hastily assume that the use of the word "Fellow"
meant no more than "Fellow Craft." Right now in our own generation
it is applied to one holding full membership in some important
society and it has long been thus employed. In fact this seems to
have been one of its oldest meanings and there is very little or no
doubt that in this sense it was used in the cases just cited.

Briefly we may say that the names of the three degrees are typical
of the days when Masonry was purely a trade. Then the apprentice
was first of all free, perfect of limbs, and of suitable age and
respectability. He was apprenticed by his parents or guardian to a
competent employer who promised by formal contract to instruct the
young man in approved trade practices. Such an employer was a
master workman, a master of the art and the business and a fellow
of his trade society.

Within a year the apprentice was required to be entered upon the
roll of the trade organization by his master. This was done with
ceremony. Usually seven years were required for the apprenticeship.
Then he produced some specimen of his skill and this was critically
examined.


Having passed inspection he became free of the trade and bearing
proper credentials of his standing he could travel wherever work
was to be found. In this manner he acquired experience as a
workman. Settling down at last he would labor under some master at
his trade for a sufficient time until he obtained the standing to
himself become an employer of other workmen and apprentices.

A careful following of this life of the apprentice will show
several points of note in the study of Masonic terms and practices.
Here may be noted the reason for saying "Entered Apprentice."
Consider the seven years of the Entered Apprentice, then the five
additional years pursuing far afield the arts and sciences, and
then the three years to qualify for mastership among one's fellows.

Remember in connection with the becoming "free" of the benefits of
the trade apprenticeship contract that this is because of the
apprentice having performed all that it required the beginner to
do, and as everybody knows the contract "bound" the apprentice to
do certain duties and when these were done he was no longer bound
but "free."

An applicant for membership in the trade body who had not had the
same training was compelled to become a member in quite another
way. A different expression was applied to his standing. He was not
"free," he had never even been bound an apprentice. But he was
"accepted" into membership. Even to this day when the society has
long ceased to make such a distinction between its members they are
known as Free and Accepted Masons.

INITIATION IN GENERAL

Since at least the era of the Romans the word "initiation" has been
employed to mean the admission into mysteries. Coming from a root
word applied in Latin to the first principles of a science it is
well employed by our fraternity to the entrance of candidates to
the several degrees.

RITUAL

Sameness of ritual is fairly well assured where every one is
expected to preserve the ceremonies against alteration. But the
communication of the ritual through these hundreds of years by the
approved methods was dependent upon the memory, and memories are
alas imperfect as records.

One of the principal arguments ventilated between the rival Grand
Lodges of England in the eighteenth century was as to which of them
best preserved the original ceremonials. Lodges in the United
States drew from the one or the other of these Grand Lodges
according to circumstances.

When these American lodges receiving their ritual from different
sources came together to form Grand Lodges in the respective States
there was a standard adopted in each case. This standard might be
a compromise or the one most popular of the two in vogue among the
constituent lodges. Under all the circumstances it would not be
surprising if there were more differences between the ceremonies
than is in fact the case.

RITES

While in this country the degrees are conferred under the auspices
of Grand Lodges, such is not everywhere the rule. In some
countries, as in Spain, they are given under the control of a Grand
Orient, or Grand East, of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Requirements are not always the same. With us the candidate must be
free-born; in England it is sufficient if he is free. In Sweden the
candidate must profess Christianity, and for many years German
Masonry would neither initiate a Jew nor admit a visiting Mason of
that race. Even in this country as in the case of at least one
lodge in Ohio, candidates in the early part of the last century
were required to avow a belief in "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and
the Old and New Testament."

SIDE DEGREES

"Side Degrees" are ceremonies not pertaining to the regular work.
The "Grotto" was at the start a ceremony improvised to interest and
divert the brethren of an eastern lodge after the ordinary business
had been transacted. Its progress led to systematic labors and a
formal organization now widely spread. The history of all side
degrees, irrespective of their measure of success, is similar.
o

HELPFUL HINTS TO STUDY CLUB LEADERS

THE DEGREES

How would you define a "degree"? How many degrees are there in the
Chapter? In the Council? In the Commandery? In the Consistory? How
many degrees were in use prior to the Grand Lodge era? What are the
advantages of the degree system? Would it not be as well to give a
candidate all the work in one evening as is done in most
fraternities? Why wouldn't it be? What is an honorary degree?

Brother Clegg says that there is something now in the Royal Arch
which was once in the Blue Lodge Ritual; can you guess what it is?
Why is an Apprentice called an "Entered" Apprentice? What is meant
by Old Charges? Why were the brethren so quick to burn some of them
in the early eighteenth century? What were the duties of an
Apprentice in Operative days? Was there ever a time in our
Speculative Lodges when an Apprentice could vote? What is the
central idea embodied in the present First Degree? Could it be
roughly summed up in the word "Obedience"?

What was the distinction between Fellow Craft and Master Masons in
the days before the first Grand Lodge? When was the Third Degree
first used? What is the key idea of the Second Degree ? Of the
Third ? If the Third was not in existence until after 1717 why do
you suppose it was invented at that time? Were new materials made
for that degree or were old materials used?

Can you define "initiation"? "Ritual" ? How many institutions make
use of ritual? What is the purpose of ritual? Describe how we came
to have the present variations in the ritual ? What are the
disadvantages of these divergencies ? What are the advantages?
Could a national Grand Lodge do anything toward the unification of
the ritual? How? If not, why not? How many "Side Degrees" can you
name? Of what use are they? Is the Shrine a side degree?

SUPPLEMENTAL QUESTIONS

Are the various grades in school analogous to our degrees? Can you
find anything like a "degree system" in a factory, in a store, an
office ? Do any countries still use the "apprentice system" in
industry and trade? What are the advantages of it ? Is the manner
in which the candidate is advanced from degree to degree the same,
in principle, as the manner in which a man is promoted in his
profession ? Is advancement the same as promotion? Does the Masonic
system of advancement from degree to degree teach you how to win
promotion in your vocation ?

Does a man have to learn how to obey before he becomes fit to
command ? Are our American boys very willing to remain as
apprentices before seeking higher places? Are they too impatient
"to go up higher" ? If so, what are the evil consequences ? Does
this explain why so many boys leave school in order to go to work?

What does the word "fellow" mean? What is meant by "a fellow of the
Geographical Society"? Why is a "degree" conferred on a scholar? Is
that "degree" analogous in any way to our degrees? What does
"Master" mean? Are you a master of your profession? Did the manner
in which you became a master in Masonry help you to learn how to
become a master of your trade?

Initiation carries with it the idea of "birth"; how are you "born
into any profession"? Does a child pass through an initiation when
it enters school ? Is religious conversion a kind of initiation ?
How is a man "born into" scholarship ? Into education? Into music?
Into politics? Initiation also carries with it the meaning of
"entering into"; just when did you enter into Masonry? How could
you enter into Masonic scholarship? How do you enter into a life
calling?

The Lodge represents the world; initiation represents birth; what
is the world into which a Mason is born? Is the process anything
like physical birth? Can you find hints of that anywhere in the
symbolism? Does that symbolism teach you the manner in which you
may be born into any of the other worlds of human experience; of
achievement ? How to be born into religion, for instance, or into
art, etc. ?

REFERENCES

Mackey's Encyclopedia:

Accepted; Anderson, James; Apprentice, Entered; Ashmole, Elias;
Degrees; Fellow Craft; Master Mason; Plot, Robert, M. D.; Rite;
Ritual; Side Degrees; Webb-Preston Work.

BUILDER:

Causes of Divergence in Ritual, in this issue of the Correspondence
Circle Bulletin.
Difference of Ritual, vol. II, p. 381, (Cor.)
Gild and York Rites, The, vol. III, p. 242.
History of The Ritual, The, vol. I, p. 291.
Meaning of Initiation, The, vol. II, p 205.
Non-Masonic Bodies, (Side Degrees), vol. II, p. 63, (Cor.); vol.
III, p. 318, (Cor.)
Right of Each Rite, The, vol. III, p. 95, (Cor.)
Rites of Freemasonry, The, vol. II, p. 209.
Ritual and Color, vol. II, p. 221, (Q. B.)
Uniform Work, vol. II, p. 348, (Q. B.); p. 382, (Cor.); vol. III,
p. 30, (Cor.)
Webb Ritual in the United States, The, vol. II, p. 166.
York and Scottish Rites, vol. III, p. 190, (Cor.)
York Rite, The, vol. II, p. 126, (Cor.); p. 327; vol. III, p. 63,
(Cor.)


CAUSES OF DIVERGENCE IN RITUAL
BY BRO. ROSCOE POUND, DEAN, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

ADDRESS BEFORE THE GRAND LODGE OF MASSACHUSETTS IN 1915

(The study of "The Degrees," in the general sense to which this
issue of the Correspondence Circle Bulletin is devoted, would be
incomplete without this scholarly summary of the present situation
of the ritual in our American system. We therefore reproduce it
here, with the suggestion that any Lodge or Study Club desiring to
fully cover this month's topic can do no better than to include it
in their program.)

That there are divergencies in ritual every Masonic traveler soon
becomes aware. Before he gets into the Lodge in a foreign
jurisdiction the look upon the faces of the examining committee,
the awkward attempt to fit two divergent systems of work one to the
other while neither party can go into explanations, shows at once
that, while each is confident of himself, something is wrong. This
comes out particularly in a matter as fundamental as the modes of
recognition. Some jurisdictions letter and divide or syllable the
word and divide or syllable the pass. In other jurisdictions the
pass is given at once but the word is divided or syllabled. And if
our Masonic traveler were to go upon the Continent of Europe and to
find a Lodge which his home authorities recognized, he night, as is
well known, come upon an unfamiliar substitute word. But, staying
upon this side of the water, when he got into the Lodge he would as
like as not find a greater or less number of officers than those he
had come to know in his home jurisdiction, he would be not unlikely
to find a radically different practice of opening and closing, and
he would be sure to find differences of detail here and there in
the work. The matter of opening and closing is a striking example
and will suffice for my purpose. In some jurisdictions the practice
is to open a Lodge of Entered Apprentices or of Fellowcrafts or of
Master Masons as the case may be and then to declare the particular
Lodge open as such. Other jurisdictions insist that this is wrong
and that the particular Lodge is to be opened as Entered
Apprentices or as Fellowcrafts or as Master Masons. Such
jurisdictions, however, open the Lodge immediately on this or that
degree without reference to any preceding degree. In still other
jurisdictions this is deemed wrong, and the Lodge is ceremoniously
opened successively from the lowest degree to the one in which work
is to be done and closed in inverse order.

One is tempted to ask at once, what are the causes of the foregoing
divergences and of many others that might be named? It is always
dangerous to generalize, but I venture to suggest six causes for
your consideration. These are:

(1) Masonry was transplanted to this country while the ritual was
still formative in many respects in England.

(2) There were several foci, and, as it were, several sub-foci, of
Masonry in the United States, from each of which was transmitted
its own version of what it received.

(3) The schism of Ancients and Moderns which obtained in England in
the last half of the eighteenth century, led to two rituals in this
country during the formative period of American Masonry, and later
these were fused in varying degrees in different jurisdictions.

(4) It was not until the end of the eighteenth century in England
and not until the first quarter of the nineteenth century in this
country that literal knowledge of the work was regarded as of
paramount importance. Moreover, complete uniformity of work does
not obtain in England, where two distinct schools perpetuate the
work as taught by ancient Masonic teachers of the first part of the
last century.

(5) New Grand Lodges were formed in this country by the union of
Lodges chartered from different states and these unions gave rise
to all sorts of combinations.

(6) Each jurisdiction, when it established a Grand Lodge, became
independent and preserved its ritual as it had received it or made
it over by way of compromise or worked it out, as a possession of
its own.

On the other hand two unifying agencies had no little influence,
namely, the ritual of the Baltimore Convention (1843) and the Webb
tradition zealously propagated by Morris in the middle of the
nineteenth century. This tradition and Morris's propaganda were
made effective especially through the institution of Grand
Lecturers or Grand Custodians of the Work, as they are variously
called in our several jurisdictions. These agencies gradually
stopped insensible variations in the rituals. But they also
gradually stereotyped each local work and gave it permanency in the
form in which the first local Grand Lecturer found it or made it.
For the student of American Masonic ritual soon comes to learn that
profound changes have sometimes to be traced to the idiosyncrasies
of masterful Grand Lecturers.

Looking at the causes of divergence in ritual more in detail, the
chief points to note are that of the thirteen original states some
got their Masonry in the period of transition, from 1723 to 1738,
in which ritual was formative, indeed one might even say fluid, and
that the remainder got their ritual in the period of the great
schism, in which there were two contending Grand Lodges in England
and hence two rival rituals.

First, then, as to organized Masonry in America prior to 1738.
Here, at the outset, we are confronted with the phenomenon of what
may be called spontaneous Lodges. For it must be remembered that
down in the beginning of the era of Grand Lodges in 1717 there was
not the fixity of organization which now prevails. Any group of
Masons anywhere were competent to congregate themselves in a Lodge
and work without Warrant or Charter. After the organization of the
Grand Lodge of England it was some time before that body was able
to establish itself as paramount and put an end to the practice of
spontaneous Lodges or turn the more stable of them into Lodges
existing from time immemorial. Hence, with great deference to the
learned legal argument of our Most Worshipful Grand Master in your
proceedings for 1914, it seems by no means clear historically that
there is any other test of the legitimacy of a spontaneous Lodge
prior to 1738 than whether it succeeded, in common phrase, "in
getting by." What compels us to take account of this phenomenon is
the undoubted existence of what was evidently such a spontaneous
Lodge in Philadelphia as early as 1731, with existing records from
1731 to 1738. It is not unlikely that there were spontaneous Lodges
of this sort in Virginia, also at an early date. And there are
grounds for believing that in this commonwealth the organized
Masonry under authority of the Grand Lodge of England was preceded
by spontaneous Lodges of the same sort, which, however, did not
become permanent because of the early setting up of a Grand Lodge.

The first institution of an organized Masonic body in America,
under authority of the English Grand Lodge, was, as you all know,
the establishment of St. John's Grand Lodge in Boston in 1733. The
St. John s Grand Lodge formed under the deputation of 1733 has been
the great focus of Masonry in this country. In addition, organized
Grand-Lodge Masonry came into Georgia from England at some unknown
date just prior to 1735; into Pennsylvania from Massachusetts in
1734; and into South Carolina from England in 1736 and from
Massachusetts in 1738.  Thus by 1738, in addition to spontaneous
Lodges of the old type in two or three of the colonies, the English
Grand Lodge Masonry, which ultimately prevailed, had become
established in four colonies including all but one of those in
which spontaneous Masonry of the old type had appeared. But this
period from 1723 to 1738, in which American Masonry had its
beginnings, is a period of transition, a period of struggle on the
part of the Grand Lodge of England for control of Masonry. It was
not until 1738 that the days of the old seventeenth-century type of
Lodge or assembly were definitely over; and the system of three
degrees, as we now know it, seems to have been established during
this same period.

All other Masonic organizations in the thirteen colonies than those
above referred to date from the period of the great schism in which
the so-called Ancients and so-called Moderns were contending,
namely, 1747 to 1813. One need not say that the ritual of the two
rival Grand Lodges was in its main outlines the same. Yet there
were important differences of detail and notably the ritual of the
so-called Ancients was much more ornate. In Massachusetts and in
South Carolina there were both Ancient and Modern Grand Lodges
under the authority of the English Ancient and Modern Grand Lodges
respectively, and the existing Grand Lodges in those jurisdictions
represent fusion of the rival Grand Bodies after the Revolution. In
Pennsylvania there was a Provincial Grand Lodge of Ancients and
there were Lodges under the authority of the Moderns. The present
Grand Lodge represents a fusion of these elements. In Virginia
Lodges of each type united to form the existing Grand Lodge.

But Massachusetts was a great center of dispersion before the
fusion and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have been
centers of dispersion of the first importance since the fusion.
When it is remembered that the fusion of rituals took place in
varying degrees in these different jurisdictions, an important
cause of divergence will be readily perceived. It would take too
long to go over the transplantation of Masonry to each of the
original thirteen states in detail. Suffice it to say that of the
four important centers of Masonic activity, Massachusetts, as a
disseminator of Masonry represented chiefly the so-called Modern
Masonry of the older English Grand Lodge, although Massachusetts
Masonry of today is a fusion of Modern and Ancient elements;
Pennsylvania and Virginia disseminated a fusion of the Modern and
the Ancient; while North Carolina was a purely Modern jurisdiction,
its Grand Lodge representing a union of Modern Lodges some under
English authority and some deriving from Massachusetts. It will be
seen, therefore, that on the whole Modern influence preponderated
in the origin of American Masonry.

A second group of jurisdictions represent the first movement of
Masonly from the original foci in the thirteen colonies. These are
Maine, which derives from Massachusetts since the fusion; Vermont,
which derives from the Grand Lodge of Ancients in Massachusetts
before the fusion; Ohio, which derives from Massachusetts, from
Connecticut, a strictly Modern jurisdiction, and from Pennsylvania;
Indiana, which derives from Ohio and from Kentucky, which latter
represents Virginia after the fusion; Michigan, which derives from
the Ancient Grand Lodge of Canada and from New York, which since
the Revolution was a strictly Ancient jurisdiction; Kentucky, which
derives from Virginia; Tennessee, which derives from North
Carolina, a purely Modern jurisdiction; Alabama, which derives from
North Carolina, from South Carolina, and from Tennessee;
Mississippi, which derives from Kentucky and from Tennessee--thus
representing Virginia and North Carolina; Louisiana, deriving from
South Carolina, from Pennsylvania, and from France; Florida,
deriving from Georgia and from South Carolina; Missouri, deriving
from Pennsylvania and from Tennessee, representing, therefore, the
fusion in Pennsylvania and the Modern Masonry of North Carolina;
Illinois, deriving from Kentucky and so representing Virginia; and
the District of Columbia, deriving from Maryland (a fusion of
Modern Masonry from Massachusetts and from England direct with
Ancient Masonry from Pennsylvania), and from Virginia.

In this group the noteworthy jurisdictions are Ohio and Missouri,
which stand out as the great secondary centers of Masonic
dispersion.

A third group of states represents a further movement of Masonry
westward, in which, as it were, the first-hand and second-hand
English Masonry were used in different degrees. These are,
Wisconsin, deiving chiefly from Missouri; Minnesota, deriving from
Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois; Iowa, deriving from Missouri but
affected largely by the commanding authority of Parvin, raised in
Ohio and a zealous advocate of uniform work; Arkansas, deriving
from Tennessee and from Mississippi, and so resting ultimately on
North Carolina and Virginia; Nebraska, deriving from Illinois,
Missouri, and Iowa but much influenced by a Grand Custodian of the
work from Ohio; Kansas, deriving from Missouri; and Oklahoma,
deriving from Kansas, each therefore variants of a fusion of
Pennsylvania and North Carolina; Texas, deriving from Louisiana;
North and South Dakota, deriving from Minnesota and Nebraska; and
a curious sub-group representing in varying degrees, directly or
indirectly, Missouri and Ohio, namely, Montana, deriving from
Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado; Wyoming, deriving from Nebraska and
Colorado; Colorado, deriving from Kansas and Nebraska; and Utah,
deriving from Montana, Kansas, and Colorado.

Fourth, a noteworthy group is to be seen on the Pacific coast.
California received Masonry from the District of Columbia, from
Connecticut, and from Missouri and formed a Grand Lodge as early in
California history as 1850. This, it will be seen, represents a
fusion of Connecticut, Missouri, and Virginia but under
circumstances that gave rise to local peculiarities. Nevada, 1865,
and Oregon, 1851, got their Masonry directly from California; and
Washington, 1858, from California by way of Oregon.

Summing this matter up, four types of jurisdiction in respect to
Masonic origin may be seen in the first group of states considered.

(1) The Moderns are represented in varying degrees by New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Georgia.
Of these New Hampshire and Rhode Island derive chiefly from the
Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Moderns, although there were Lodges of
Ancients in each. Connecticut and North Carolina derive from the
English Grand Lodge of Moderns and the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of
Moderns, though the Massachusetts Grand Lodge of Ancients
established Lodges in Connecticut. Georgia derives from England.
The old Massachusetts St. John's Grand Lodge prior to the fusion,
which had the chiefest share in this group, was the principal focus
of Masonry in the United States and its influence especially
through North Carolina and Virginia was predominant in giving to
the beginnings of Masonry in this country a distinctively Modern
character.

(2) A second group represents the Ancients alone, namely, New York,
where Masonry after the Revolution came from the English Grand
Lodge of Ancients and New Jersey which derives from New York. This
group has had little or no influence in spreading Masonry to other
jurisdictions except as the Webb tradition was affected by the
circumstance that he was raised in a Lodge chartered by the
Ancients and his active work began in New York.

(3) A third group represents a mixture of Ancient and Modern
elements. In this class we must put the present Grand Lodge of
Massachusetts where both elements came directly from England and
the Grand Lodge of South Carolina where both elements came from
England and both from Massachusetts. South Carolina has had some
little influence in the further development of the work in this
country, partly through direct propagation but more through the
writings of Dr. Mackey.

(4) A fourth group represents Ancient and Modern Masonry mixed with
other elements. Notable in this group are Pennsylvania, which
received both from Massachusetts and had also an unknown element;
and Virginia, which received both from England and both from
Massachusetts but also has an unknown element. These states have
had very great influence in the propagation of Masonry in the
United States. Maryland, representing a mixture of the Modern
derived from Massachusetts and from England, with Pennsylvania
Masonry, has had a scintilla of influence; and Delaware,
representing a mixture of the English Ancient Masonry with that in
Pennsylvania, has had none at all.

Passing now to the second great group of states which was examined
above, this may be divided into four sub-groups. The first
represents a predominant Modern influence. Here we may classify
Ohio and what might be called the Ohio family of jurisdictions; the
North Carolina element, in the great North Carolina-Pennsylvania
family; and Tennessee, which received Masonry directly from North
Carolina, a truly Modern jurisdiction, and to some extent spread
Masonry in the states to the north and west. In the second
sub-group we may put Michigan which has had no great influence in
propagating Masonry. In the third sub-group we may put Maine,
Vermont, and Florida which represent a fusion of Ancient and Modern
Masonry; Maine and Vermont through the present Grand Lodge of
Massachusetts, Florida through a fusion of Lodges established by
Georgia and by South Carolina. In a fourth sub-group we have
Ancient and Modern mixed with other elements. This is represented
by the Pennsylvania element in the North Carolina-Pennsylvania
family and in what might be called the Missouri sub-family, and the
Virginia element in Kentucky, Illinois, and in the California
family.

With respect to the third class of states as taken up above we may
note, first, what I have already called the North
Carolina-Pennsylvania family, in which we have a mixture of a
predominating Modern element with one made up of a fusion with the
Ancient and Modern. Second, the Missouri sub-group of this North
Carolina-Pennsylvania family, namely, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and
Oklahoma, and what might be called a Missouri-Ohio variant in
Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and Utah. Third, a derived group from the
two former, with some admixture from without. In this group Ohio
has been a strong influence. Here again the pedigree is
preponderatingly Modern. Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas are
to be included in this group.

Finally, there is the California family, predominantly Modern in
pedigree but mixed with a fusion of the Ancient and Modern, namely,
California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

Putting this in a different way which may bring the situation out
more clearly, the Ancient element by derivation predominates in New
York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Michigan. It was the stronger
element in the fusion in Massachusetts, and is notable in Maine,
Vermont, South Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

There is a secondary Ancient element in what might be called the
Virginia family, Kentucky, Illinois, and the Virginia element in
the California family. Also there has been a slight Ancient element
through Pennsylvania in the North Carolina-Pennsylvania family.

The Modern element by derivation predominates in New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, Connecticut, North Carolina, Georgia, and Ohio. It is
a large element by derivation in the Ohio family, in the North
Carolina Pennsylvania family, and hence in the Missouri subfamily,
as it might be called, and in the California family. On the whole,
if no other factors than derivation had been at work, American
Masonry would have been more nearly the Modern Masonry of
eighteenth-century England than the English Masonry of today in
which the more elaborate and ornate ceremonial of the Ancients was
largely substituted.

We have seen that one prime cause of divergence in ritual is that
the ritual was transmitted orally from different Masonic centers
and in these centers often represented fusions of different
rituals. Next we must note that even in these centers themselves
ritual was not fixed in the modern sense till later. Our present
day conception Of letter-perfect knowledge Of a ritual whose every
word is fixed and settled down to the dotting of i's and crossing
of t's has its origin at the end of the eighteenth century when the
supremacy of Grand Lodges had been incontestably established and
each of the rival Grand Lodges had its definite ritual. In large
measure we owe this conception to Preston, who labored diligently
for precision and uniformity in the lectures. From the lectures it
spread to the work at large, and exact memorizing of every detail
word for word became a Masonic virtue. We now take this to be a
matter Of course. But that it was not a matter Of course at one
time is shown by the case Of Dr. Oliver. Oliver's father was Master
of a Lodge at Peterborough in 1801. He was remarkable, as all
contemporary accounts testify, for minute and exact knowledge of
the ritual. That this, which we expect of every Master today, as it
were ex officio, was remarkable in 1801, speaks for itself. But it
is even more significant that Oliver, who was trained carefully by
his father to this same letter-perfect knowledge, was himself
thought remarkable and had something to do by his example and by
his writings (especially his identification of the Landmarks with
the ritual) in establishing the doctrine that it is the duty of the
bright Mason to know his work word for word.

If as late as 1801 Masons who were letter-perfect were remarkable
even among Masters of Lodges, it must be apparent that the work
brought to the several jurisdictions in America from the same Grand
Lodge in England at different times and by different persons must
have differed in its details. It must be apparent also that the
work which spread from different Masonic centers in the new world
at different times and by the agency of different persons likewise
varied more or less in important details. Thus from 1733 to 1770
the Modern Grand Lodge of Massachusetts had established Lodges in
New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. We have good reason
to suspect that the details did not reach each of these
jurisdictions precisely the same. Indeed there is reason to believe
that letter-perfect Masons were at least as rare here as they were
in England at the same time and there was no central agency of
control in this country. It is obvious, therefore, that derivation
from the same source in the eighteenth century does not at all
guarantee uniformity of ritual. As Preston and his followers made
it the correct thing in England to know the ritual accurately, so
Webb, who shares with Albert Pike the distinction of being the
great American ritualist, made critical attention to detail the
correct thing in America. Webb's work was done between 1797 and
1819, and it was not till about 1825 that thorough, critical,
literal knowledge of the work came to be appreciated. Indeed a
generation later the revival fostered by Morris found more than one
jurisdiction in a condition where every Lodge was largely a law to
itself in this respect. But before 1825 Masonry had so spread that
Grand Lodges had been set up in Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Indiana,
Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
Missouri, Illinois, and the District of Columbia. Some of these new
jurisdictions, such as Ohio and Missouri, were themselves active
agents in propagating Masonry. In other words, the secondary
centers of Masonry in the United States had become established
before fixity of ritual in every detail had been put upon a firm
basis, and these centers to some extent fixed their ritual parallel
to and along with the older centers. Consequently when
jurisdictions of the third generation, as it were, derive from the
same center of the second generation, it does not follow that they
got exactly the same ritual--and this quite apart from the
inevitable changes involved in oral transmission. Those who carried
Masonry across the continent in the fore part of the nineteenth
century were much more concerned with the substance than with the
form. Oral transmission will account for the interchange of the
good archaic "wittingly" and the more intelligible "willingly,"
which is so common. But it will not account entirely for the
interchange of "wayfaring man" and "seafaring man," which is no
less common, or for the almost complete lack of accord in the
details of the search by the Craftsmen which a study of American
ritual will reveal. As to these one may only say that those who
transmitted the ceremonial knew the general character of the plot
that was to be acted and more or less of the details of the
dialogue. But they had not earned and very likely had not felt
bound to learn every word of the dialogue so as to give its details
precisely the same on every occasion. Thus we get another basis of
divergence. Even after the work came into a new place there was no
assurance at that time hat it would be transmitted exactly as it
was received.

To sum up the foregoing discussion: (1) The work received in
different parts of this country from England at different times was
not necessarily the same and must often have varied considerably;
(2) the work transmitted from the same Masonic center in this
country to different places at different times, particularly in the
eighteenth century, and to some extent in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century, was not always the same and often differed in
important details: (3) the work when so received did not remain
exactly as received, but, with the lax modes of work and lax modes
of transmission which prevailed so widely until the influence of
Webb, of the Baltimore Convention, and of Morris made for
strictness and accuracy, wide fluctuation in detail was possible
and even common. Accordingly when the system of Grand Lecturers
became established a great deal depended on the individual views of
those who first held these offices and the extent to which they
could induce Grand Lodges to go with them. Unhappily many zealous
Brothers who held office as Grand Lecturers were extremely dogmatic
and sought to improve the ritual on a priori or analytical grounds
rather than to ascertain just what had been received.

But, it will be said, the foregoing will account for changes in a
word or phrase here and there and even for changes in the tenor of
the dialogue. But it will hardly account for such wide divergencies
as those in the modes of recognition, in the officers of the Lodge,
and in the mode of opening and closing. To understand these wide
divergences, we have to bear in mind that the standardizing of the
ritual in the last half of the eighteenth century involved making
a great deal as well as selecting and standardizing. The acting of
the ritual, instead of merely communicating it, as a regular thing,
involved not merely a settling of details, but a manufacture of
details. What this means may be illustrated if you compare the
drama of the third degree, as told in the lecture in that degree,
in almost any of our jurisdictions, with the actual ceremony as
acted in the same jurisdiction.

We must turn to history for an explanation. The evidence of the old
Charges and the evidence of seventeenth-century accounts of those
who, having been made Masons, recorded the fact in their diaries,
show pretty clearly that the ordinary course in the seventeenth
century was to communicate the whole of Masonry at one sitting.
There were at most "parts" of one ceremony rather than separate
degrees with separate ceremonies. These parts go back to a prior
ritual of two parts--(1) reception of the apprentice; (2) passing
or raising this apprentice to a fellow of the craft or master. The
most plausible hypothesis on all the evidence seems to be that the
two degrees of Entered Apprentice and Fellowcraft as we now know
them, represent a division into two of the Apprentice's part, while
the Master Mason degree and the Royal Arch or Elect and Perfect
Mason (according to the rite chosen)--i. e., the communication of
the true word-- represent a division of the Master's part--of that
part, which, when received, made one a fully qualified Mason. In
the seventeenth century we have abundant evidence that all this was
commonly done at once--and that it was done not by acting out all
the details, but rather in the way in which the higher degrees are
often communicated today--by obligating the candidates, explaining
the words, passes, and modes of recognition, and reading over the
old Charges to him, with the Legend of the Craft and what we should
now call the Lectures.

Even after the revival, for a long time this mode of working seems
to have obtained. Thus in Dr. Stukeley's diary under head of
January 6, 1721, he tells us that he was made a Mason on that day
and that he was the first who had been made for many years. His
diary adds: "We had great difficulty in finding members enough to
perform the ceremony." If in 1721, four years after the revival,
with four Lodges and a Grand Lodge in London, it was hard to find
members enough who knew the ritual well enough to communicate the
whole to Dr. Stukeley at one sitting, it must be evident that the
Grand Lodge had to settle a great deal authoritatively, along
settled lines, it is true, but without settled details to guide it.
The oft-cited testimony of the old brother who told Dermott that
Payne (second Grand Master), Desaguliers, and others were the
inventors of Modern Masonry may well have some foundation in this--
that they fixed for the Modern Grand Lodge what prior thereto was
only fixed in its general lines. Thus we may understand how it
comes that the three degrees of Craft Masonry the world over follow
the same general lines and yet differ so widely in all the details.

But to come back to the system of degrees: I can only summarize the
evidence. The first point is that the absence of uniformity as to
degrees is very clear during the whole period down to 1738. The
Grand Lodge records show that it disciplined where it could,
exhorted where it was not expedient to discipline, and sought to
produce uniformity by example, while its own practice was still
fluid and formative. In the next place, there is no clear mention
of three degrees down to 1730, and even that year, in the defence
of Martin Clare to the attacks upon the Grand Lodge in Prichard's
Masonry Dissected, it is assumed as a matter of course that there
were but two degrees. All the prior literature, e. g., Anderson's
Constitutions of 1723 and Drake's speech at York in 1726, as well
as the old Charges, speak of two degrees, Apprentice, or after
1723, Entered Apprentice, and Fellowcraft or (not and) Master. That
Fellowcraft and Master were synonyms at that time seems absolutely
established by Lodge records, contemporary allusions, and the whole
Masonic literature of the time. There were two "parts" as they were
called, (1) the Apprentice Part, and (2) the Master's Part. The
latter was often omitted as a formal ceremony and the secrets
simply communicated, as is done so often in our higher degrees
today. Not, let us remember, that any part of the substance of the
three degrees is new. The antiquity of every part of each degree is
as well established as the fact that there was a change in the mode
of working them. What has been shown is that between 1723 and 1738
there grew up a "new way of communicating the old secrets" by
splitting the Apprentice Part in two, appropriating to one part the
name of Entered Apprentice and to the other that of Fellowcraft,
and giving to the Master's Part the degree of Master Mason. The
first record of this in Scotland is in 1735, and many Scotch Lodges
long after continued in the old way, as their records show. In
Ireland, it came in 1738 in the wake of the second edition of
Anderson's Constitutions. In England, it was recognized by Anderson
in 1738 as fully established, although Clare in 1730 used the old
phrases. Somewhere in those eight years the practice in England
became settled.

Let me repeat--all this does not cast the least doubt on the
antiquity of the Master's Degree or, as it used to be called, the
Master's Part. It simply means that the exact details of the
ceremony by which different Grand Lodges in different parts of the
world now require the degree to be conferred were fixed somewhere
between 1723 and 1825, or for the newer American Grand Lodges
sometimes even later. As to the antiquity of the degree itself, I
can only refer you to the discussion by Ball in 5 Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum 136. Ball's discussion seems to show clearly not only
that what we now know as the third degree existed long before the
era of Grand Lodges, but that, to use another's words "having
passed through a long decline, its symbols had been corrupted and
their meaning to a great extent forgotten when the degree itself--
then known as the Master's Part--was first unequivocally referred
to in any print or manuscript to which a date can be assigned--i.
e., 1723." Unhappily those who wrought for a certain ritual in the
second half of the eighteenth century did not have the learning to
restore these symbols, to undo these corruptions, or to avoid
further corruptions or confusions of their own. And in like manner
in American Masonry we have, for like reason, developed some
further corruptions and confusions of our own. Some of these are
traceable to known sources, as for example, the monument in the
lecture of the third degree, which is an unhappy anachronism of
Webb's. The well-merited criticisms of Albert Pike in the first
three lectures of his Morals and Dogma, though based wholly upon
considerations of scientific symbolism, have proved to be entirely
borne out by the history of the symbols of Craft Masonry as
subsequent writers have been able to work it out.

If it took so long to standardize the degrees, to determine that
the work was to be done in three degrees and to fix the details of
each, it was not to be expected that matters of less importance
should get fixed before the era of local Grand Lodges, each with
full sovereignty over all details. Accordingly many things passed
into permanent subjects of dispute which might well have been
settled at least for the whole English-speaking craft if there
could have been a union of Ancients and Moderns in England prior to
the Revolution or if the Revolution had not put an end to the
hegemony of the Grand Lodges of England and left our several
American Grand Lodges to settle so many things each for itself and
each in its own way.

One striking example is to be seen in the grand honors--"Those
peculiar acts and gestures by which the Craft express their homage,
their grief or their joy on important occasions." It is common to
lay down-- e. g., Mackey so states--that the grand honors are of
two kinds, the private and the public. He then tells us that "the
private grand honors of Masonry are performed in a manner known
only to Master Masons, since they can only be used in a Master's
Lodge. They are practised by the Craft," he goes on, "only on four
occasions: When a Masonic hall is to be consecrated, a new Lodge to
be constituted, a Master elect to be installed, or a Grand Master
or his Deputy to be received on an official visitation to a Lodge.
They are used at all these ceremonies," he adds, "as tokens of
congratulation and homage." He then proceeds to describe minutely
the public grand honors or as some call them the funeral honors and
to explain when they are given.

All this sounds clear and convincing as he expounds it. But there
are several things to remark about it:

(1) In many Grand Lodges homage to the Grand Master is done by
making the signs of the degrees.

(2) In some jurisdictions the signs of the degrees are reckoned the
private grand honors.

(3) In some jurisdictions the three times three to which Mackey
evidently refers are considered public grand honors.

(4) Some notable jurisdictions deny that there are any public and
private grand honors respectively.

(5) The American distinction which Mackey discusses is quite
unknown to the United Grand Lodge of England. But the ceremony of
the raising of the hands and beating of the breast which Mackey
describes took place at the Masonic funeral of James Anderson in
1739, as we learn from a newspaper of the day. The reporter was
impressed very much by what he saw and described it carefully.
There are jurisdictions, however, in which quite another mode is
used on this occasion instead.

Here we have a case where the practice was not settled and each
jurisdiction had to determine its own course. Probably Webb's
Monitor and Mackey's Encyclopedia made for uniformity and
influenced more than one of our jurisdictions.

Many such cases might be cited. But perhaps I have said enough to
make my point. A useful parallel might be drawn from American law.
After the Revolution we received the common law of England as the
foundation of American law. But the common law of England was still
formative on many most important points. E.g., the reception of the
law merchant was not complete till some time thereafter. Lord
Mansfield had still many years before him in his work of turning
the custom of merchants into the common law. Again, the
crystallization of equity, begun so well by Lord Hardwicke in the
eighteenth century, was not complete till the long chancellorship
of Lord Eldon in the first decade of the nineteenth century and
James Kent in New York was able to divide the honor with him. Thus
the fixing of the common law went on parallel in England and
America for a generation after the Revolution and we worked out
many things in our own way and many of our states worked out the
same things in different ways. The same thing happened in Masonry.
We received the English Masonry of the eighteenth century as the
foundation. But English Masonry as we received it was not a fixed
and fully developed system at every point. In more than one place
it was still formative and when we broke off our Masonic allegiance
along with our political allegiance after 1776 that great unifying
agency, Preston's Illustrations, was but fairly off the press. Thus
we did much parallel with English Masonry, in the way of fixing the
details. Each of our Grand Lodges has had to some extent to work
out in its own way the dialogue and the setting of the noble story
which the Middle Ages handed down to the eighteenth century and the
latter century endeavored to reconstruct and restore from the
corruptions of a long era of communication rather than working--of
reading or describing rather than acting.



"I HOLD THE SCALPEL
BY BRO. HASLETT P. BURKE, J.G.W., COLORADO

ADDRESS BEFORE THE GRAND lodge of Colorado, 1917

SINCE the Grand Lodge of Colorado was organized in 1861, when Grand
Master Chivington appointed Brother C.F. Holly as its first Grand
Orator, more than fifty of his successors have passed across this
stage and delivered as many annual addresses. Many of these men
have fully measured up to the title they temporarily bore. Many
have stood high in commercial or professional life, many were
polished scholars and eloquent speakers, all devout and faithful
Masons. Since the revival of 1717, in almost all of the Grand
Jurisdictions established throughout the civilized world, like
addresses have been delivered by equally capable and qualified
brethren. Meanwhile, students and historians without number have
written and spoken upon every conceivable phase of the fraternity
or subject of interest to it. In the light of these facts, no
combination of presumption and assurance could hope to present to
this audience anything "new or never said before," and I am not
ambitious even to make the attempt. If I can apply a few very old
lessons to new and bewildering conditions, can drink and give you
to drink again from springs as clear and cool as when our
predecessors sought them for refreshment two centuries ago, I shall
be satisfied.

It is customary, I know, on such occasions to find no fault with
Freemasonry, to sketch with the glowing tints of a Colorado sunset
the glories of its past, and paint with a brush which might have
splashed the rainbow across the heavens our faith in its future.
But, while it is permissible to the lover to linger rapturously
over real or fancied lineaments, the faithful surgeon must cut the
cancer, and this morning I hold the scalpel.

Our national ship of state was constructed and piloted through the
tempests of her first voyages by men who exemplified in their lives
the homely virtues taught by our fraternity. This commonwealth was
won from the wilderness and her foundations laid as firm as the
granite of her everlasting hills by men from the same mould. The
greatest dangers which today menace our national well-being are due
to the decay of that rugged character which was the chief glory of
our pioneers, and in no state of this union have the diseases
attendant upon that decay been more manifest than in our own.

We learn so much in home and shop and street, we read so much in
books and magazines and daily press of the frightful calamity which
now shakes the earth, that one might well wish within these
peaceful walls to hear no word of war. But its shadow is
omnipresent, and in speaking to thoughtful and earnest men, members
of a vast organization whose nerves reach every center of national
life, I think it neither wise nor desirable to ignore the presence
of the skeleton at the feast.

While we meet here in a peace that passeth understanding, in the
midst of a material prosperity almost slothful in its fulness, the
most sickening human slaughter since time began drenches a
continent in blood and pollutes the air of a quarter of the globe
with rotting corpses. That titanic struggle has now raged with
increasing fury for three long years, and since our Grand Master
directed the lights of our last annual communication extinguished,
Columbia has been swept into the maelstrom, which has now engulfed
more than a score of sovereign states. In seven of these
Freemasonry is a recognized institution of unquestioned standing,
with a membership of approximately three and a half millions, and,
while exceptions doubtless exist, I think it may well be asserted
as the rule in each of them, as in our own, that in every community
where a lodge has been erected the moulders of thought and leaders
of action are to be found around its altar.

This madness would never have descended upon mankind or, having
done so, would long since have passed away, but for the fact that
statesmen holding in their hands the future of mighty races have
never learned or have forgotten the lessons we try to teach to
Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason.

If these things be true, then this hour demands rather the vehement
and fiery tongue of a Savanarola than the logic of a lawyer or the
calm consideration of a judge.

There are 19,000 Masons in the state of Colorado, and some
1,700,000 in the United States, and if activity consists in
maintaining organizations and conferring degrees, then our lodges
are active. If perfection in ritualistic work, speeches full of
admiration for the order and devotion to its principles, the
faithful collection and disbursement of its funds, or occasional
acts of charity mean progress, then we are keeping step with
humanity; but if the preservation of peace and the promotion of
universal brotherhood is our chief mission on earth, who shall deny
that we have met a temporary reverse? Is this reverse to be noted
only as a world war has enveloped the great Masonic nations, or is
it manifest in the smaller affairs of state and community? Isn't
the stream running turbid where it should be the purest--at its
very source--in the fraternal relationships of brethren of the same
city and the same lodge? I need not answer that question. Too many
of you have answered it for me in your hearts already. It seems to
me that a new baptism is essential to fraternal salvation--not in
Germany alone, with her 60,000 Masons, whom we so short a time ago
recognized, nor in France with her thousands whom we have never
recognized, but also in the United States and in Colorado. The very
spirit of the brotherhood forbids that we engage as an organization
in political or military propaganda. We can only teach the lessons
which should guide the individual Mason in the path of duty,
leaving their application to his judgment and discretion. This
little marble on which we whirl through limitless space is in God's
crucible today; it is being re-moulded for a brighter era. If
Masonry is to justify its claims and vindicate the hopes of its
children, it is one hour past high twelve.

Whatever fancies we may have heretofore indulged concerning the
near approach of the millennium, the immediate past must have
taught us how slow and painful is the climb from the swamps of the
elemental to the peaks of the ideal. Despite the desperate struggle
through all the centuries since the naked hands of scholars and
philosophers, blackened in the fires of persecution, began to push
back the dark ages from the face of Europe, it still at times seems
true that--
"We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged 
India's prehistoric clay;
Whoso drew the longest bow
Ran his brother down, you know, 
As we run men down today."

The dangers which threaten us are not far to seek; they lurk at our
lodge room doors; their remedy involves no profound wisdom, no
revolutionary measures. 

"The statues of our stately fortune
Are sculptured by the chisel--not the ax!"

Hand us the tools of the craft and the work of the craftsmen and
let us try some of the specimens.

Trooping through the door of our preparation rooms we find an ever
increasing company composed of those from whose faces is missing
the stamp of high intelligence, in whose eyes the torch of
education has lighted no fires and whose halting steps are led by
friendly suggestion or quickened by the hope of gain. Have
committees forgotten to report whether these have "sufficient
education and intelligence to understand and value the doctrines
and tenets of Freemasonry"? Did the Senior Deacon demand of them if
they came "unbiased by improper solicitation and uninfluenced by
mercenary motives" ? When they answered the inquiry, did they know
that "truth is a divine attribute and the foundation of every
virtue"? Has not bitter experience, no less than the language of
the ritualist, yet taught us that "It is better that no workmen be
added to the roll than even one unworthy foot allowed to cross the
threshold" ?

The shiftless beggar on our streets, the criminal who filches for
his living the labor of others, the open apostle of the easiest
way, are not the only violators of the commandment "Six days shalt
thou labor"--these rarely wear the square or use the compass--but
it is otherwise with the idle rich, the workman who watches the
clock, the maker of shoddy, the man who leans but never stands.
What do they here ? Have they never heard that "The bee hive is an
emblem of industry and recommends the practice of that virtue to
every created being" ? Was the injunction that "our necessary
vocations are on no account to be neglected" omitted when they
stole past ?

What of the canker of loose life and crumbling standards, these
breaking family ties, these grinding wheels in our divorce courts,
these rapidly multiplying commercial crimes for which the law does
not always provide a penalty? Apply to these the working tools
which were the favorite implements of our puritan forefathers. Does
not the square still inculcate morality and the plumb rectitude of
life and conduct?

Where is the responsibility for that spirit of lawlessness which,
until the grim god of War stalked upon the stage, seemed at times
ready to shatter our constitutions and dissolve the social compact-
-a spirit that manifests itself in church and school and state, in
commerce, industry and politics--a spirit which claimed the
protection of majorities while it repudiated the obligations of
minorities, that vaunted its democracy while it fostered anarchy,
that here, where its forehead could almost touch the blue vault of
heaven, covered a state with obloquy, that today actuates those who
seek to extort shameful profit from their country's plight by
cornering the food stuffs of a people, fomenting race riots in
populous cities or paralyzing the national arm by strikes in
shipping industries and the manufacturies of war munitions ? Have
we ceased to "recommend to our inferiors obedience and submission,
to our equals courtesy and affability, and to our superiors
kindness and condescension," or do such recommendations now fall on
deaf ears? If we forget that "in the state we are to be quiet and
peaceful citizens, true to our government and just to our country,"
that we are "not to countenance disloyalty or rebellion, but
patiently submit to legal authority and conform with cheerfulness
to the government of the country in which we live," we might better
stretch forth impious hands and tear our starry banner from the
nation's capitol. Not every act of treason is punishable by
statute.

"Justice is that standard of right which enables us to render to
every man his just due, without distinction," and it should be the
"invariable practice of every Mason never to deviate from the
minutest principles thereof." When Louis XIII of France said to his
great minister who sought a hearing, "This nor place nor season,"
the Cardinal answered, "For Justice all place a temple and all
season summer." To a defiance of this social fundamental is
directly traceable the cataclysm which has engulfed humanity. The
attempt first in private life and relations and next in public and
international to substitute for it the brigands' creed--

"The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power 
And they should keep who can."

Do we desire to understand just how deep some of earth's rulers
have sunk in that mire, we have but to recall that it was a
successor to that monarch who took for his motto, "Let Justice be
done though the world perish" who was so ready at the dictates of
expediency to treat his plighted word but as the idle wind and his
most solemn covenant as a scrap of paper.

Are there slackers among us in this crisis--men who feel the
tugging of domestic strings which never hampered them before, who
can not neglect their usual vocations for the public good when
those vocations have heretofore prospered in other hands, who
shrink from the struggle and who fear the future? Let them be
reminded that "Fortitude is that noble and steady purpose of mind
whereby we are enabled to undergo any pain, peril or danger when
prudentially deemed advisable." It smooths the roughest road,
scatters the darkest clouds and nerves the weakest arm. It is the
virtue most needed in this nation today, for--

"Fiends of water and earth and fire 
Are baffled and beaten by the ire 
Of a dauntless human will."

Men of the mystic tie, this is the time and place to polish up
these working tools, to get back to first principles, to renew
acquaintance with those primary lessons upon which this order rests
and teach them to the world "by the regularity of our own
behavior." However false some may at times have been, however
careless others, this great society could not have lived through
the centuries, could not rise today in all its power and majesty,
had not the vast majority of its sons been faithful.

Keeping honor bright and courage high--those "qualities that
eagle-plume mens' souls,"--holding firm that faith under the name
of which our ancient brethren are said to have worshiped Deity,--
faith to friend and family and flag,--treading the daily path in
earnestness, temperance and simplicity, meeting all men upon the
level of equality before God, holding all in that brotherly love
which is "the foundation and capstone, the cement and glory of this
fraternity," our ideal still must be that mythical Masonic hero
whom we once represented. "Let us emulate * * ~ trust;" so may
these Masonic virtues, not jeweled emblems or beribboned
parchments, designate us as Free and Accepted Masons.

