SPRIG OF ACACIA

If the All-Seeing Eye is the most ancient and the 47th Problem of Euclid the grandest of the emblems of the Master Mason's Degree, the Sprig of Acacia holds the greatest comfort. Not even the Anchor and Ark as symbols of hope speak to Masons as does the simple sprig of evergreen "which once marked the temporary resting place of the illustrious dead."

Acacia was a symbol long before Freemasonry existed. It is the shittim wood of the Old Testament, the erica or tamarisk at the foot of which the body of the dead Osiris was cast ashore so that, when found, it would rise again.

The Jews have always considered shittim a sacred wood; a symbol of life. Logs of it used in houses sprout long after the tree is destroyed that the beam be made. Everyone is familiar with the evergreen which does not seem to die in cold weather, as do less hardy trees which shed their leaves and sleep through the winter.

Shittim wood was used to construct the table of shewbread, the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred furniture of the Temple. Of its boughs, so it has been said, was woven the crown of thorns which the Nazarene wore ...

But if Freemasonry did not make it a symbol, we adopted it as symbolic of our own special Rite and beliefs.

Acacia marked the spot where lay all that was mortal of the Widow's Son. Raised from a dead level to a living perpendicular in the very shade of the acacia, how should the plant not stand for immortality, a life to come, the most blessed hope of man?

In the stately prayer in the Master Mason's Degree we hear, "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again -" Later we learn of man who "cometh forth as a flower and is cut down" by the scythe of time which gathers him "to the land where his fathers have gone before him."

Where is that land?

Uncounted millions have asked. Freemasonry's reply is that glorious immortality symbolized by the Sprig of Acacia. Its reality is attested by every hope of every man born of woman since the first infant cried the birth cry.

The Sprig of Acacia has another equally beautiful implication, besides that of certainty of spiritual survival. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The Sprig of Acacia is not only the emblem of a future life but of faith.

It matters little what faith that it. It is the existence of some faith which is important; the certainty of things not seen. The Mason may be Methodist, Baptist, Spiritualist, Universalist, Unitarian, Trinitarian, Mohammedan, or Brahmin! He may believe in the orthodox future life of golden streets and milk and honey; his faith may send him to a whole realm of seven planets which with the esoteric Buddhist he must visit in turn; he may believe in the successive planes of Spiritualism or the Nirvana of the Orient - the Sprig of Acacia is at once a symbol of the immortality taught by his faith and of the faith itself.

We cannot prove immortality any more than we can prove God. Proof is the result of logic, and logic is a process of the mind. Faith is the product of a process of the heart. We cannot reason ourselves into or out of love; we cannot reason ourselves into or out of faith.

The Sprig of Acacia proves nothing - nor tries to. It means everything to him who has the faith. It is Freemasonry's attestation to her children of the certainty with which she regards her trinity of truths:

There is no Plan without a Planner. That Which Was Lost will at long last be found. Divine life which is ours can no more die than can Divinity.

The phraseology is the author's. The teachings are Freemasonry's. Their symbol is the little green sprig which Freemasons drop with their tears on the body of a deceased brother in full faith that - where and how we presume not to say, leaving it wholly to the Eye which sees and the Everlasting Arms which enfold - he, even as we, shall live again.