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Over the years, I have received many excellent pieces of Masonic literature via electronic mail. I will place the best of these on this and subsequent pages. As a page gets to be of a size that requires more than 60 seconds to load at 28.8 k-baud, I will create a subsequent page. -- David Terrell
Taken from Light and Shadows of Freemasonry by Rob Morris, 1852
It was in the year of light, 5789, the same year and month that witnessed the inauguration of George Washington as first President of this Republic, that Mr. Oliver Lanceroy was installed pastor of the church at Weeconnet. He was then a young man. He had just graduated at the well-known school, even then venerable for its age and character, Harvard University at Cambridge. Many anticipations were formed concerning him; for his boyish promise had been brilliant, and his career at college was with the foremost both for scholarship and good conduct.
Add to this the fact, that Washington himself acknowledged an interest in his success, having stood by the dying bed of his father wounded to death at Trenton, and at that solemn hour pledged his Masonic faith to exercise a supervisory care over the son. When, therefore, the lad arrived at sufficient age to enter the University, it was with a warm recommendatory letter from the General's own hand. And when, with the sand yet fresh on his diploma, he visited Weeconnet, preparatory to meeting of the vestry, it was with a second letter more than sustaining the praises of the first.
So it was not strange that the young minister, pious, learned and coming so well recommended, should have been unanimously called to the pastorship amidst the most confident expectations as to his future usefulness. Nor were any of those hopes falsified.
While Mr. Lanceroy never was a popular idol (he had none of the qualifications of a demagogue) and was never run after as a clerical wild beast or a reverend monster, yet he always contrived to secure the attention of his hearers at home, and a welcomed place in the pulpits of those congregations abroad with whose pastors he exchanged. His pews were rarely vacant. His church membership regularly increased. He received his moderate stipend with punctuality and subsisted on it with frugal comfort.
In due season, he offered his hand to the daughter of one of his own parishioners, and was accepted. The union was in every respect a fortunate one, for he found womanly virtues as permanent, and love as sincere, as the heart of the fondest husband could desire. Sons and daughters were born to them. The stipend was increased from year to year to correspond with the increased demands upon it, and while there was but little hoarded up in the treasury at home there was never any real necessary of life in which they lacked.
There is but little in the life of a pastor wherein the superficial observer can find an interest. It seems but a routine of ministerial duty, arduous enough yet practicable, demanding the whole time, the whole attention; but it is a routine whose results, though they may appear scanty and insufficient to the unobserving, are in reality, among the very highest blessings of society. The marriage bond; the baptismal rite; the consolations of religion in hours of spiritual conviction, in hours of earthly trial, and in hours of death; the settlement of disputes; the oversight of education; the calls of popular charity; - these, and other charges press from day to day upon the pastor's attention, and in the well-ordering of these, lies the public weal. Such, for thirty-seven years was the life of Rev. Oliver Lanceroy, in charge of the church at Weeconnet. Such in the life of hundreds who oversee the flock of Christ throughout our broadly-extended Stakes. May their reward not be lost in the day of reckoning when each craftsman shall receive his lawful wages.
The lapse of thirty-seven years, though imperceptible in the estimate of an eternity, is a large hiatus in the life of a mortal. It removes one generation into darkness and dust, and places another in their seats. The lapse of thirty-seven years brings down the history of Rev. Mr. Lanceroy, - now by the favorable judgment of a neighboring Theological school, Doctor Lanceroy - to the year of 1826, year of light 5826, year of darkness; that period so rife with anti-Masonic stratagems and discoveries. It was the time when a large political party made the grand discovery that Freemasonry is an institution established in opposition to all laws human and divine! It was the period when the cunning sought to snatch away her richest jewel, secrecy, that they might expose her, unchaste and unbefriended, to the scorn and contempt of the world.
Too well did malice and detraction succeed, and although in the goodness of God it was but for a little while, and the wings of Jehovah were even then sheltering her, yet many a true heart despaired, and many an honest though weak one endeavored for the sake of peace, to untie the indissoluble bonds of Masonry. Some of the symbols on the tracing board temporarily lost their value. The slipper, that earliest and most impressive reminder of allegiance was erased; the brilliant star, quintuple-rayed, followed it into darkness and disuse; the daytime labors on the highest hills, nearest heaven, gave place to the toils and self-denial of the unwearied twenty-seven.
We have in another work given at some length a sketch of the evil consequences that resulted from the introduction of Masonry as a religious test. The question of Masonry and Antimasonry in churches and among the pious, proved very detrimental to the craft. The shade that bigotry and superstition gave to the operations of pure morality as displayed in Freemasonry, was well nigh a fatal blow.
Ignorance, and a lust for an unlawful knowledge, had wielded the gauge against her, and thereby inflicted a severe wound; political ambition, that hydra of all republics, had followed up the stroke until the very heart of the aged victim palpitated beneath it; but when the voice of the church cried out "crucify, crucify", a crusade against Masonry at once commenced, as if the Holy Temple were in the Infidel's hands and must be redeemed at all hazards.
During the closing term of Gen. Washington's administration he had presided at the conferring of Masonic honors upon the son of his old friend, and thus Mr. Lanceroy had become a Mason. We have often observed that the most enthusiastic lovers of the royal art, these whose zeal the longest endures, whose fire goes the most reluctantly out, are those who were the slowest to appreciate the full beauties of Masonry. Such men ponder; they compare; they reflect. They anticipated much from their knowledge of the character of the membership and from the published code of Masonic morals. They were sufficiently conversant with human nature not to took for a perfect development of Masonic principles in any one man this side of the grave, yet they were prepared to judge the tree by its fruits, by all its fruits considered in one cluster. In time their judgments become convinced. If the Lodge in which their membership commenced is a working Lodge, prompt in ceremonies, in explanations, in landmarks, and in morals, they become zealous as a furnace of charcoal, and their zeal burns as long as the fires beneath a mountain.
It was so with Dr. Lanceroy. The earliest East of his Masonry was glorious with light. A succession of enlightened officers in his Lodge at Weeconnet followed up and fixed the impression, and it was not strange, therefore, that a few years witnessed the reverend gentleman himself at the head or the order, not only in his own village, but in all that Masonic district.
Years stole noiselessly, almost imperceptibly, upon him, until he numbered nearly half a century. Then the shafts of death flew suddenly around him and struck clown his wife, beloved by all as a mother in Israel, a married daughter and two sons, the staff of his declining years.
The patriarch gathered up the remaining sheaves of his harvest, and from that day withdrew his active participation in the management of the Lodge, declaring that a higher duty now awaited him at home.
It was only a few years after this afflictive dispensation of providence, that the storm of Antimasonry began its ravages. Churches, formerly as harmonious as the Christmas angels, now became like unto heathen temples dedicated to the goddess of discord. The sound of ax, hammer, and many other unlawful weapons rang through the sacred chambers, disturbing the peace and harmony of the workmen. Amongst others, the old congregation at Weeconnet caught the infection. Whence it started, in whom it originated, none could tell. What wonder in that! what wisdom has traced the cholera to its source! what quarantine, was ever efficient to wall out the plague! There was a Judas somewhere among. the patriots, and that enough.
But in whatever source it originated, its course was rapid and violent, and the cry of "Down with all secret societies! Death to the mother of serpents!" soon became popular. Ah! but the wrath of man is a fearful judgment in the hands of God.
By the side of the numerous evils inflicted on Masonry through this persecution, there was nevertheless one advantage that grow out of it. It brought back the decaying lights of the last generation into the Lodge; it called back much retired Masons as Dr. Lanceroy from their hermitage, and placed them around the old altar once more, in the cast, and in the south, and in the west.
This was the case with many an aged brother, and of Dr. Lanceroy among the rest. When the first list of renouncing (and denouncing) Masons was presented to him, as he sat in his library preparing his Sabbath discourses, he construed it as the second Cincinnatus had construed his country's summons to the field. It aroused the force of remembered vows; it called back cherished hours, and festive nights, and linked professions. Shadows of the dead, memories of the living, seemed, to group around him as he read the perjured catalogue. A voice as from one who had authority, seemed to command him, "Comfort ye my people", The veteran crumpled the foul sheet in his hand and hurled it from him, as he turned around to write a petition for membership in his old Lodge. Hence-forth he was punctual to every meeting, whether stated or special, nor neglected a single opportunity of expressing in public places, as well as in the tyled chambers of the temple, his indebtedness to Freemasonry.
As his congregation received the shameful impulse of Antimasonry from without, they began one by one to withdraw from Dr. Lanceroy's ministry. The unaccustomed sight of empty pews began to pain his eyes, the murmurs of alienated friends his ears. His doors, once like the city gates for publicity, were deserted. Letters from those whose parents had sat beneath his ministry, and who had themselves cherished his ministrations until chilled by this cruel blast, letters always disrespectful, often violent, sometimes insulting, were placed in his hands. He wept over them in his retirement.
The All-Seeing Eye, whom the sun, moon, and stars obey, and under whose watchful care even comets perform their stupendous revolutions, that Eye which pervades the inmost recesses of the human heart, that Eye beheld the drops of mingled mortification and grief that showered from his eyes; but still he endured patiently and he made no complaint.
But when on a certain Sabbath morning as he endeavored to fulfill an engagement to exchange pulpits with an old friend, gray-haired like himself, and was publicly forbidden by the vestry to raise his voice in that church, the cup of his sorrow was full, and Dr. Lanceroy returned home to himself on the charity of God, seeing that the hearts of men were embittered against him.
That very week a summons from the officers of his own church was presented him, citing him to appear and answer certain charges of official misconduct that had been preferred against him. The motives that prompted this course were sufficiently obvious. The charges that had been trumped up were intended only as a blind, and whether sustained or not, it mattered little with the persecutor, for reasons enough would be found for declaring his pulpit vacant, and that was the main thing sought for.
With this painful prospect in view Dr. Lanceroy, accompanied. by a legal adviser, and the remaining members of his family, took his way to the vestry room at the appointed hour, prepared for the worst.
He anticipated wisely. The scene that presented itself as the place of trial was one that offered some remarkable features. The room was the same in which the church officers had assembled thirty-seven years before, to give the young graduate a unanimous call to the pastorship of that church.
All the old members of that official board, with one exception, were dead. That exception consisted of Elder Drane, for the last fifteen years in his dotage, favored only with occasional returns to sanity. It was in one of these lucid intervals that, hearing of the pastor's trial, he had demanded to be conducted to the vestry, that he might be a spectator; but long before he reached the door his imbecility returned, and he was now lying at full length in one of the pews, apparently unconscious of all that was passing around him. Besides Elder Drane, there was not one of the church officers present, who had not received baptism at the hands of Dr. Lanceroy, and bowed beneath his heartfelt pleadings with God, and been joined by him in the bands of matrimony, and shared with him in the happiness of revival seasons, as well an in the distress of spiritual dearth.
As he took his seat with the board there was a marked contrast between the youthful locks of the judges. and the gray hairs of the accused.
Before him in the body of the house, a large old fashioned square room, was a crowd densely packed, comprehending not only his own flock (banded against this gentle shepherd) but the residents of the surrounding farmsteads gathered together, some in sympathy, more in curiosity, many, alas! in derision, to witness the trial. Amongst the former his aged eye could see several of his Masonic brethren from the various Lodges in the district, and there was a gleam of hope in the glance.
The charges were read. They were wordy and diffuse, but involved only these propositions: "that the accused had contumaciously resisted the advice both of official and lay-members, and had stubbornly published his attachment to Masonry by conducting the members of that order in public processions as well as in their secret meetings; that in this act he had fallen behind both the spirit and light of the age; that the church pews were fast becoming vacant on account of his obstinacy; that spiritual revivals had ceased; that his usefulness in the administration of the word was destroyed, the interest of Christ's kingdom retarded" - and much more or the same sort.
The legal gentleman who had volunteered to aid Dr. Lanceroy, (since become a Grand Master of Masons in the same State,) arose now to speak to the technical points. He answered the charges in a dry business way that while it proved how illegal and unchristian would be the action of the vestry in ordering Dr. Lanceroy's dismissal, it failed in touching any chords of sympathy, or turning the popular current that had set so fatally against his client.
A rejoinder from the lawyer selected by the vestry on account of his violent Antimasonic prejudices, smothered the law and the gospel under a mountain of words that denoted one idea very clearly. "Antimasonry is about to rule the land and it shall rule it with a rod of iron!"
After some further altercation between the professional gentleman, the presiding officer enquired of the accused if he desired to say anything for himself, before the vote on the charges was taken. A dead silence of considerable duration followed, and as no response was heard, the chairman had again risen, preparatory to putting the question, when Dr. Lanceroy at length arose.
It was with strange difficulty that he gathered himself erect, he had never felt so weak in body before, and he was compelled to place his hands upon his chair for support, even as Jacob in his death-bed injunctions, leaned on the top of his staff.
It was with still greater difficulty that his tongue performed its office. A weight clogged it heavily at the very time when its eloquence was most needed. He had succeeded however in stammering a few incoherent words, and was collecting his ideas into a more rational channel, when he suddenly caught the eye of Elder Drane, the superannuated church officer, the friend of his youth, one of the working Freemasons of the last generation.
This old main had arisen from his seat, and was standing upright with superhuman strength, staring full upon him. His eye was filled with a strange meaning.
A quick gesture came from his hand, to the casual observer it might have seemed as the movement of an idiot. But there was method in that madness, and a gleam of acknowledgment passed over the minister's face as he beheld it. Dr. Lanceroy sat down.
Every eye was now tuned in the direction of the Elder, and great was the sensation in that large audience when the veteran, with more than ninety years upon his head, and for nearly a score of them a second child both in body and intellect, opened his pew door and walked with firm strides up the aisle.
The crowd deferentially gave way, and closed behind him. A seat upon the platform was offered to him, the seat in which he had presided long before. But steadily rejecting every offer, and making no other acknowledgment of the general courtesy, save a dead stare, he at once began to speak.
Never will that strange oration be forgotten while one of its hearers remains alive. In this latter half of the century there abides a tradition among the elderly portion of the population that has preserved the leading points and much of the peculiar language used.
"Vile pack!" shouted the frenzied Elder with a voice stern and threatening as when it thundered in front of the forlorn hope at Stony Point; "vile pack, that has joined in the howl of Antimasonry a dogs bay the moon, and know her not as their source of light, what would ye of this man! Has he ever defrauded any of ye! Or stricken ye with his hands! Has he fallen away into base doctrines that endanger your soul! Lo, these thirty-seven years he has gone in and out before ye and your fathers before ye, and served at the table of the Lord, and has one accusing voice ever been raised against him! But he is a Freemason! And has the fraternity of mystics cajoled him to join them in his declining years! I tell you, base descendants of an honored stock, he was a Freemason before ye had any being, and such as he are Masons wherever dispersed around the world, though they may never hear of a Mason's Lodge. He was a Mason in heart, in life, in practice, in aims though the mystic rites had never been performed upon him, Ye would have him to renounce Masonry! Fools, do ye know what ye would have him renounce! What shall he recant! Ye know not what ye ask! Would ye have him to declare himself the friend of the Serpent and the foe of the Trampler! the opponent of Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and Justice, and the servant of Drunkenness, Cowardice, Indiscretion and Fraud. Shall he quench the bible-light and fall back upon the book of nature! repudiate all yearnings for immortality and, like yourselves, all charity to suffering humanity! I tell you, insensate pack, as I told your granthers, (grandfathers) before ye - well that they did not live to see the generation of vipers that from their loins have sprung - I told them as I tell ye, that an honest man cannot renounce Masonry though a hypocrite may!"
* A short hand reporter was present, and the writer has read his verbatim copy of the latter portion of this speech
The eyes of the veteran here flashed as the eyes of a basilisk, upon Lawyer Savin, the renouncing Mason, the rabid editor of an Antimasonic sheet; and the time-serving lawyer cowered beneath the glance.
"The wolf may cast off the sheep's clothing," pursued the old man in a still higher key, "the sheep's clothing that concealed his marauding errand, and he is a wolf again as he was all the time a wolf, a prowling, marauding, murderous wolf. But the lamb cannot lose its gentle heart, its spotless robe, its meek and loving character, to become a wolf. Masonry in my day was taught to a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Shall he renounce the morality as ye have done! or is it that ye would have the allegory expounded and the symbols explained, Ah, pitiful wretches! there were fifteen like ye in the Wise Man's day who could not wait for the word, and well did they despair, for they found that obstacle in their own hearts which forbade all hope of their ever being recipients of so great a trust. And ye like them would snatch at that of which you are so thoroughly unworthy! but think God, your unholy efforts are in vain, for from the days of Solomon, Masonry has withstood such as ye.
"Dr. Lanceroy, Pastor, Dear Brother beloved - " the pastor of well nigh forty years experience, stood up and meekly bowed his head before the veteran who laid both hands, withered, trembling and cold, upon it; "Brother beloved, I warn ye, as a voice from the grave, BE YE TRUE! By the memory of the immortal Washington, by the virtues of the holy Saints John, by the inspiration of Solomon wisest of men by the strength and beauty of the Tyrian, twain, and in the name of the whole fraternity, I warn you let this great trail that is come upon you, fall to shake your integrity. Be fortitude yours. Though your column may be broken in the midst, soul to heaven, dust to earth, yet the remembrance of you, only continuing faithful, shall be treasured in the hearts of faithful brothers, while the name of the righteous shall flourish there an a green bay tree."
Headlong prone to the floor, the Elder fell, all the powers of nature having even away at one instant. The meeting was of course dissolved in confusion. Upon the next Sabbath the pastor stood at the head of a newly-opened grave, around which was grouped a bond of Masons, the last beheld in Weecounet for twelve years, and there they honored the resting spot Elder Drano by the significant emblem of the resurrection.
Upon the Pastor's table at home lay the order of dismissal, passed by unanimous vote of the officers of the church.
A few more weeks and he was seen to leave the parsonage with his remaining family. His furniture and effects followed after him, and then the old brick house was tenantless; for his successor, a brisk, finical gentleman, up to the spirit of the age, declined residing there, and took his boarding at a more showy place.
Reports were soon circulated that Dr. Lanceroy was removing to a considerable distance westward.
A few months more and the newspapers of the day announced his death by a sudden stroke of apoplexy.
Twelve years afterwards the Deputy Grand Master of that Masonic district, with a noble train of brethren and surrounded by an honored band of officers, spoke an eulogy, well deserved and eloquently declared, upon Dr. Lanceroy, the Mason who was faithful unto death.
And then the craft, joining together their means as God had dealt bounteously with them, reared a tombstone, stamped with the symbols of Masonry, to remind coming generations of one well worthy to be their standard in the aims of the order.
And beneath the name and age of departed they engraved these solemn charges deduced the history of the dead; to sustain a failing cause; to fly to the relief of a distressed principle; to prop the falling temple or to fall with it; to support the adherents, to cherish the endangered secrets, and to honor the slighted virtues of Freemasonry.
AMERICAN FREEMASON, DECEMBER 1912
IN his facetious search for a "Brand New Theory of Masonic Origins" in last February's AMERICAN FREEMASON, the Editor "found all countries and nations of antiquity preempted." Paradise, the Garden of Eden, Egypt, India, Ancient Britain and prehistoric America had been exploited, while Gymnosophists, Buddhists, Thibetan Lamas, Chinamen, Mayas, Incas, Benedictine Monks and Jesuit Fathers had been laid under contribution, and each heralded in turn as responsible for the beginnings of Masonry.
The writer is but too familiar with the resources of Masonic bibliography not to feel sympathetically akin to the shepherd lad "with his sling and five small stones from a brook," who sallied forth to meet the giant Philistine; but like David of old he does not despair of returning with the head of the giant problem which will never cease to puzzle humanity until it is adequately worked out.
The purpose of this paper is less to enter point blank upon the labyrinthine paths of solution than to define the exact character of the "riddle of the ages" and hazard a theory of how it may or can, - yes, has been solved.
The growing body of students of comparative religion, who term themselves "Theosophists," have a precisely similar difficulty to cope with, and as among interested Masonic students, hundreds are at work endeavouring to localize and historicize principles which are ever elusive, because the truth concerning them is that they are everywhere manifest and have been so during all time. The beginning of Masonry cannot he found, for the precise reason that "before Abraham was, Masonry is."
That which Masonry searches, that which Theosophy searches, that which dogmatic religion fears to search, or rather fears the discovery of, is one and the selfsame thing. Theosophy, for want of a better term, calls it the "Ancient Wisdom," and is in a measure right, but not even Theosophy has fully grasped the specific identity of the lost science of the Logos.
And yet, Theosophy is full of it, Masonry is full of it and the religions of the world are full of it; full of its fragments, its unidentified debris, its mutilated fractions, scattered like those of Osiris upon the waves. "Paradise" and Noah's Ark are indeed part of it and the Creation epic of Hawaii is but an echo of that of Babylon.
There is a LAW, so simple in itself and in its applications that the veriest child may be made to comprehend its lessons, by which the Universe unfolds like a plant from within the germ heart of its seed, and to man exhibits, as though upon an unrolled scroll, all those marvellous philosophies which have conferred immortality upon the Sages of Hellas and the Orient.
This LAW reveals at once the nature of our Creator; enough of the bent of His infinite mind for us to be assured that our own finite natures are truly reflexes of the Divine prototype, so that the assurance that "God made man in His own image" ceases to be but pointless babble.
It reveals, by the minute and incontrovertible testimonies which it gives to that effect, that all of the historical mythologies and religious philosophies which the world has ever harboured were originally designed as exoteric, recordable veils for esoteric, unrevealable, unrecordable FACTS, classed today as "Mysteries," not as unknowable but as unknown.
The "keeping of this LAW," in the aspirational, emotional, sacrificial sense, even though it be today unidentified except as a vague longing of the human heart for a reality which is sensed rather than comprehended, is RELIGION.
The knowledge of this LAW, the power to grasp and apply it, to consciously and knowingly work, hand in hand, with the G.A.O.T.U., to live in a close bond of union with an ever present Master, and realize that physical death is but loving initiation to a loftier degree, was once MASONRY.
Religion was the promise, Masonry the pledge.
That pledge exists today enshrined in every Lodge, for he who can penetrate behind the veil may read in every sign and symbol the story and the reason of his being. As beautiful and inspiring as is the Masonic ritual and as full of manifest heart-searching truth as it may be, it has been completely voided of its ancient science. Many of its monitorial injunctions, though full of benevolence and solicitude for the brother, are vapid and unhistoric or unscientific. It has become a species of religion also, to be taken on faith in statements which make no tax upon the understanding.
Yet Masonry and Religion are children of the same divine parentage. Alike, each had its rise in a precise, God-communicated fund of practicable, ponderable fact. This is the reason for the universality of symbolisms.
The salient features of the ancient Mysteries of various lands in which initiations were the requisites of practical worship, as differentiated from mere prayers, offerings and sacrifices in full light of day, have been ably handled by several generations of Masonic writers, but the nature of the superior information conveyed to the high initiate has not only eluded discovery, and in most cases no suspicion has been entertained by modern writers that there was any more to the ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries than a sort of super-heated Italian apprentisaggio, which taught the neophyte wholesome respect for the power of his order.
It is upon this point that we base our dissent from the theory that the controversy anent Masonic origins be closed, because we are personally convinced that it has not even yet begun.
In expectation of further light on this interesting topic, we may be permitted to hazard a few hints as to the direction from which it may be anticipated.
There is not a symbol or article of furniture in the Lodge which has not a reason for its shape, size, number, (if plural) and presence, utterly outside of and transcending the monitorial explanation thereof, as a scientific demonstration of which the moral deduction gives no hint whatsoever.
The higher the degree, the more this divergence becomes apparent, for while the symbolism becomes more expressive and claims to embody more subtle teachings, it fails to convey to initiates therein certain positive knowledge, the possession of which would raise them head and shoulders above the lewd of non-initiates, intellectually, without reference to the resonance of their titles or the size of their medals or jewels.
This knowledge, which was the fruit of ancient initiations was not only positive, but practical.
It would enable a single individual to give arts, letters and science to a race of nomad barbarians within the space of his own life-time, and the semi-myths of Hermes, Thoth, Cadmus, Oannes, Fo-Hi and others who are enshrined in the histories of ancient peoples as having actually done so, are but embodiments of the truth that it was of a superior manner of imparting practical knowledge and the impressing of such as the direct gift of God, made manifest as the giver entitled to the gratitude and claiming it, that initiation consisted.
The universality of these "first civilizer" myths therefore direct our attention to the possibility of a teaching capable of transforming the poor, blind and ignorant, wherever found, into masters of the work of civilization and enlightenment by process of initiation, rather than education, although the one is the corollary of the other.
To the universality of the "Teacher" myths must be added the universality of the majority of Masonic symbols, which as we have noted, are being pointed out under every sky as proof positive that whatever it was, which has since become Masonry, originated at that latitude and longitude.
We have therefore to halt in our wild globe scurry after the site of the legendary Masonic "Garden of Eden" and realize that in pursuit of something of which we find the prehistoric traces EVERYWHERE, coupled with traditions of Divine origin, we may have to recast our notions and re-focus our binoculars upon some principle or set of correlated principles which express the same things to all peoples, times and places, because they are eternal verities and not mere toys. Now the astonishing part of it all is that Masonry possesses this marvellous treasure and do" not know it.
"He came unto his own and they knew him not," applies with as great force to the pseudo Jew of the Lodge as to the racial Jew of be "promised land."
The Masonic ritual of the civilized world bespeaks a line of descent more particularly from the Jewish deposit of the "Ancient Wisdom," than from, for example, the Chinese or the Aztec.
Therefore we will probably not go far astray in tracing our ritualistic development along that historical line of racial progress.
The history of the Jewish people is something widely apart from the trash taught with the avowed object of fastening the crime of the ages upon the heads of this people.
Their historical contacts with Persia, Babylonia and Egypt during both Pharaohonic and Ptolemaic times and their contacts with Greek philosophy must be placed in the balance.
We must not forget that the Old Testament of the Christian was translated not from the "Thorah," but from the copied "Pentateuch," a work which filled the orthodox Jewish world, at the time the original translation was made, with horror, because the Egyptian-Greek-Hebrew rabbis who made it injected therein the glyphs of the secret philosophy of the Sun-priests of Heliopolis, so that Kohaleth, son of David, surnamed "Shelomoh," "the Prince of Peace," became for all time Sol-Om-On, "The Sun, breathing life upon Heliopolis," and the fundamental principles of the Babylonian Kabbalah, or number philosophy of the ancient Magi, which the Thorah already embodied, applied to the construction of proper names, extended so as to make them conceal a sort of Baconian cipher of the "Wisdom of the Egyptians," a system which develops in excelsis in the subsequent construction of the "New Testament."
That this cipher is a concealment of the true meanings of the symbols of the Masonic Lodge and the revelation of the LAW to which they bear witness, of its Divinity, of its globe-encircling universality, and of its eternal truth, it is the promise of the immediate future to make manifest.
THE AMERICAN FREEMASON - APRIL 1911
WITH intent to gain clearer and broader vision of the entire Fraternity the editor of THE AMERICAN FREEMASON addressed inquiries to representative brothers of other lands and peoples. Too long have American Craftsmen been content to remain ignorant of all Masonry except that of their own jurisdiction, or of their own country. Because of this ignorance is a narrow provincialism engendered and intolerance manifested. It is time that our section of Freemasonry, most prosperous in material things and numerically the strongest, should pass beyond mere provincialism in any outlook upon the universal institution. The view from the heights is always inspiring, and well worth exertion of the upward climb. We can look from thence beyond the petty boundaries which an imagined convenience has marked, and the walls of division that prejudice and ignorance have raised. Sweeping the full horizon, we may see that men and Masons, the wide world over, are striving in many ways for the betterment of humanity, for the revelation of the Truth that maketh free, for the coming of the reign of righteousness on this sin- and sorrow-stained earth. Is it not better, my brother; more worthy a real man's thinking and doing, to have part in these great strivings, and a generous sympathy for all the diverse workers, than to fold supine hands self-righteously, and condemn all who are not our own house-hold.
The editor's question to these foreign brothers was, in substance: "What message has Masonry to men of your race and country, and what work is it doing for its membership and the world?" To this query several replies have already been received, each one giving new and inspiring thought. First place is here found for that from India. Brother Narayan Purushottam Pandit speaks well for that vast conglomerate of races which fills the great Asiatic empire. Such a letter certainly gives us better understanding of the needs and aspirations of these our far-away brothers:
"To the Editor of The American Freemason:
"I am greatly pleased to acknowledge receipt of your letter of inquiry. The high sentiments therein expressed are truly admirable, and they do honor to the editor of a paper which is specially designed to enlighten the Craft by placing facts fairly and clearly before its members; giving, at the same time due attention to the spiritual, ethical and philosophical teachings of our beloved institution.
Whatever may be our differences of race and environment and heredity and education, we are Brothers - bound by the Mystic Tie. As Freemasons we all look to the Light. Every one of us is bound to a work of enlightenment - not only for our brothers, but for the world at large, where yet millions are groping in darkness and enslaved by ignorance and superstition. It is our duty to raise the standard of Truth, to rescue that Humanity which is being crushed beneath despotism, tyranny and cunning in many forms. It is the noble aim and object of Freemasonry to lift high and rally under the peaceful banner of Light and Truth - to bring together the nations and peoples of the earth, long separated and eyeing each other as enemies. Let us look forward and prepare ourselves for the day when there shall be no distinctions of caste, color or creed; when there shall be no rank achieved by mere possession of wealth or the accident of birth; when all men shall stand upon the level of opportunity, free to join hand in hand, and united in singing praises to the Great Architect of the Universe. It is necessary that we come now to an understanding of each other; that we help, each other; that we work for the whole world. It is not a noble task to liberate the poor slaves of ignorance and superstition, and to aid them in reaching the free and blessed atmosphere of Knowledge and Enlightenment.
It may not be amiss for me to say something for you on the present state of Freemasonry in India. Lodges of the English and Scottish Constitutions have been and are working side by side, in harmony and accord, to spread the grand principles of the Craft. Men of the different castes, colors and creeds meet on the level in our Lodges, and there learn to love each other as children of the same Supreme Being, who is the Father of all.
There are six District Grand Lodges under the English Constitutions - those of Bombay, Madras, Punjaub, Bengal, Burma and Ceylon. These have jurisdiction over thirty-three, twenty-five, twenty-six, seventy-four, fourteen and seven Lodges, in the ordered given. There are several Lodges in the principal cities, as Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. To many of these Lodges Royal Arch Chapters are attached. In these bodies many Brahmins, Mahommedans, Parsis, Jains and Sikhs have been initiated. Other Masonic bodies, such as Roman Eagle conclaves, Consistories of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, etc., are flourishing. Their ranks, however, are chiefly filled from the Europeans and high governing officials. Indeed, it may be said that at present they are exclusively confined to Europeans, as but few persons among the natives aspire to rise in them. Brother Prasono Coomar Duti was, I think, the only Hindu who has ever risen high in these offshoots of Masonry.
You ask "What message does Freemasonry hold and bring for the people of your great and ancient land?" Let me declare the truth, and so I may communicate to you something of this message. Freemasonry has been considered solemnly secret, from every point of view, by many narrow-minded brethren. And yet its work is, and should be, open as the day. Our institution was formed to help the weak and to raise the fallen. Your Great Teacher said: "They who are whole need not a physician, but those who are sick." If we do not give up narrow-minded prejudices and superstitions and intolerances, and extend hands to embrace those who arc qualified to be raised, it is quite impossible for us to do the intended work.
You know well, dear brother, that India is a poor country now. The rich, who fatten themselves on the blood and brawn of the poor, have no value of time and life. They smother themselves in senseless enjoyment. The poor have not the means to maintain themselves. Under these circumstances it is clear that there is no opportunity for men of limited means to join our ranks. The rich merchants and high officials who join us are too busy with their cares and affairs. They lack the interest to study and understand the grand philosophy of Masonry, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Because of these things our Institution, flourishing though it is, has so far failed to extend its benign influence to the public at large.
As to the social, political and religious aspirations of brethren in India; Masonry here is truly unsectarian, and broad as the thoughts of men. Every Mason is at liberty to maintain and hold to his religious and social beliefs. The Brahmins, the Mahommedans, the Parsis and the Christians are on a level. For social and political discussions there is no scope. And except for a few brethren, there are none to seek for information and enlightenment in the Craft. Our institution is, I say, unsectarian. That is the great, the irremovable bulwark of the Craft. The Gita, the Bible, the Koran, and the Zendavesta can each be taken as the Volume of Sacred Law, without any violation of the ancient and honored landmarks. Universal Masonry, as we understand it, invites to her peaceful standard all good men and true, without distinction because of caste, color or creed. Why should we, or any of us, in this day of spiritual awakening and enthusiasm, refuse to march forward together. The Divine Light is before us all, and the Divine Secrets are revealed to all. Is it any wonder, my dear brother, that Americans and Europeans speak of India as "the inscrutable East?" A man living on the material plane can not find out nor grasp the living truths revealed to him who is upon the spiritual plane. The Indians are called "dreaming heathens," because Western materialists have never really tried to understand them. The great object of Indian philosophy is to be one with all that we see, which is the apparent garb of God, and by this we may hope to reach understanding of and communion with the spirit hidden within. "That thou art" is the foundation of Indian ethics. "I am Brahma" is the motto of Indian philosophy. "God is indescribable enlightenment and joy" is our watchword. "Do unto others as you would be done by"; "I and my Father are one"; "I am the light of the world" - all these are Indian truths in another garb. Occidentals have no enthusiasm to study the philosophy of India in its original form, and so the Indians, not being understood, are dubbed "heathen."
But the day is near now when we can understand each other. I entreat you to ponder over the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishadas, which contain the highest teachings of Indian philosophy. Islamism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity reach the same great truths in different forms. You will not think me carrying this matter too far, for surely you are of like opinion, if I say that God never revealed His will and His Spirit exclusively to any one nation or any one person. He is the Father of all His children and is not partial to some and neglectful of others. His love is unlimited, and whosoever becomes one with Him will know Him in essence, which is the Supreme Knowledge and Bliss.
Freemasonry has its mission with and for men of all peoples; to raise from gross materialism to a perception of spiritual truths. There is even a broader Masonry than is taught in our Lodge rooms - though for which the Lodge gives us direction. God has spread His symbols everywhere - in water, in sky and on earth. Every phenomenon in Nature expresses some Divine Truth. Let us but open our eyes and seek to understand. Let us make effort to raise the veil of allegory and read aright this wonderful symbolism of the Universal Temple that the Great Architect has placed before us.
I shall be greatly pleased to send you articles on Indian Masonry, as its principles are taught in the Vedas, the Upanishadas and the Puranas, which are our national treasures. Tell your readers I will consider it a pleasure and a privilege to answer any queries as to Indian ethics, philosophy or symbolism.
Dear brother, may the Light of the World enlighten you.
Arand, India, February 23, 1911.
DELIVERED BY ROBERT W. HILL, P.G.H.P., INDIAN TERRITORY, BEFORE GRAND CHAPTER, ROYAL ARCH MASONS, AT MUSKOGEE, Indian Territory (Later Oklahoma), AUG. 13, 1896.
The mission of Masonry has to do with the dissemination of Truth and its history as well as with its conservation, and it is by the study of the past that we are prepared to forecast the future. We seek the progress of humanity and the moral welfare of men, and we are glad of the special encouragement which Masonry gives to the study of the arts and sciences, but to understand Masonry we must study Man himself and observe the growth and intellectual progress which precede the higher civilization. Out of the past come to us the records which speak of man's struggle with his environments, of his efforts to solve the riddles of life, of the gradual lifting up of his thoughts from the concerns of earthly existence, until at last we read of his strong determination to know all that may be known of the Grand Architect of the Universe. The birth and development of the idea of God is worthy of our study, and it has a direct relation to Masonry, for through it we may trace one of the reasons for the existence of the Fraternity. The youngest Entered Apprentice is taught to reverently bow at the name of God, and the dulling ears of the gray-haired veteran finds in the Name a consolation such as no other word can bring to his soul. From infancy to old age we are made Conscious of the goodness of our Creator, and we look to the Divine Being for guidance and preservation in all our trials and perplexities. He is the inspiration of our work, and in Him is our hope for eternity. But He was not always known as we now know him, and so, as illustrated in the Hebrew records, we may find help in an examination of the growth of the idea the name now represents.
Masonic Legends cluster around the ancient Hebrews, and much of what is best in it is so linked with their history and heroes that its teachings would be shorn of their moral power if the elements drawn from the Biblical history were eliminated. It is for this reason that any attempt to trace the growth of the moral and religious conceptions must receive a degree of welcome, even though the conclusions arrived at be not altogether in accord with our previously formed impressions. The ethics of Masonry are found in the teachings of Scripture, even though we may not regard Solomon as the first Grand Master. Its mysteries are linked with the highest ideals which it is possible for the human mind to conceive, and around these the system of initiation has drawn the veil of allegory. Yet the idea of Brotherhood, like the idea of God's Fatherhood, finals its roots in the long ago, and we trace it back through ceremony and symbol to the teachings received by the chosen people whom Moses led out of bondage, if not to an earlier age. It is my purpose today to examine the growth and gradual enlargement of the idea of God held by the ancient Hebrews and perhaps it may possess something of interest from the fact that it is a departure from the set themes which have heretofore been chosen for addresses to our Grand Lodge. At least those who follow the thought which is embodied in the subject will find ample reason for the choice of subject on this occasion when so many are gathered who honor the Name above every name.
Let us examine the ancient Hebrew Concept of God.
We say that the true progress of any people is usually to be measured by the enlargement which its concepts evidence from time to time. In the earlier periods when the tribe or nation is lifting itself into culture and power its concepts are usually narrow, and differ but little from those held by neighboring peoples, but as national life expands and brings into action, through contact with other nations, all the energies of the people, the concepts also broaden and take on subtler meanings. Thus it was with Greece and Rome, thus it has been with modern nations, and thus it was also with the descendants of the Patriarchs as their national life expanded through the centuries. In those days of semi-anarchy when the tribes were seeking to establish themselves in the Promised Land, their political, social and religious concepts were narrow and admitted of only narrow interpretations, but in later times when trials and triumphs, conquest and thraldom had done their work, the Hebrew mind entered into a richer life, and began to regard all things from a higher and purer standpoint. To the wandering herdsmen of the wilderness, as probably to the patriarchal ancestors, the concepts of the True, the Beautiful and the Good, were only dimly outlined, but to the great Prophets and religious teachers of later centuries they were mirrored boldly and in content hardly surpassed in later ages. It is interesting to trace the growth of the grandest ideal held by this people, for to them we are indebted for much of what we hold as best in our present thought of God, which, after all, is but the full flower promised by the ancient bud.
The two leading names for Deity which continually occur in the Old Testament, with the meaning which they now contain, help us to understand the religious transformations through which the Jewish race passed before their conceptions of God were rounded in the revelations of His nature which are embodied in the teachings of Christ. The ancient generic term is EL or ELOAH, both of which are singular; ELOHIM is the plural form. One curious thing about this term is that while the plural form is generally used, it is always with a verb form in the singular, and for this reason some grammarians term the plural form of the name the plural of excellence or majesty, many find in it a symbolic suggestion of the Trinity. It is probable, howsoever, that the plural form carries us back to the infancy of the Semitic and Aramaen stock when polytheism prevailed, and that the use of the singular verb marks the triumph of theism over fetishism and the final absorption into one idea of the attributes which had before been embodied in the many gods of the people. When the process of growth, growth it must be called, had reached a certain stage in the development of the people, there followed the natural attachment of the tribal specific names to the ideals embodied in the term ELOHIM. The Hebrew specific name in the Old Testament is JEHOVA, and it, with its special meaning, marked the greatest advancement along the lines of national intellectual uplift. Before proceeding further it is well at this point to say that in spite of the assertion of many to the contrary, the idea of God seems to be a part of the primal possession of all peoples and all ages. Whatever its form, the idea is in the mind of men in some shape.
So far as the concept of God in the Old Testament is concerned, it does not matter what position we take; whether that it was a part of the primal investment, and as such was distributed alike to all people after the Fall, or whether we look upon all religious development as an evolution from a primary concept, which begun its growth after the Fall, the fact that no people have ever been discovered entirely destitute of the idea leads most scholars to the conclusion that it has been part of the inheritance with which humanity was invested wallets men began to be upon the earth. The Scriptures teach that the knowledge of God was with man in his period of innocence, and also that it accompanied him when he passed out from Eden, but it does not declare that it was with him at the time of his creation. The records of the creative works of God which relate to man seem to imply a long period between the creation and the Fall, during which man was imbibing knowledge, and developing into what we find him when the Temptation begins. It is thus possible to look upon the idea of God as a slow growth from a feeble germ with which man began existence. It hardly seems probable that the concept was fully rounded out even at so late a time as that given to the Temptation, for had it been it would have been impossible for the Serpent to have so easily prevailed over man and caused the Fall. It is thus possible also to reconcile different theories with the facts as we find them and as they are told in the Scriptural narratives. It is probable there have been several great stages of religious thought, with the idea of God as the goal, such as seem to have been the experience after the Fall. These were: 1st. A stage of Atheism; that is, not a denial of God's existence, but a period during which there was an absence of any definite ideas on the subject, a period of slow development during which man was so engrossed with the great task of subduing the earth, that he had little time or inclination to think upon anything not directly connected with his daily task. 2nd. The stage during which the concept of God dawns, or rather forces itself upon the attention. The merely animal feels the checks of the spiritual. This is the period of Fetichism. Man believes that he can force the Deity he dimly recognizes to bend to his wishes and comply with his desires. We find this stage of development with all that it implies still upon the earth and we are enabled to measure its power. The third stage brings in the period of Nature-worship or Totemism, during which natural objects, such as trees, animals, mountains, and even the sun, moon and stars are worshipped. Then for the fourth stage comes the recognition of the superior power of the deities and Shamanism, or Priestcraft, with its idea of the intercessory power of the Shaman, or priest, controls the mind, for it is supposed that the abodes of the superior deities are far removed, and none may attain to them save through the good-will of the Shaman, who is gifted with the keys to the divine dwelling place. This is the beginning of the stages of Anthromorphism, which, when entered into completely, finds the gods still more thoroughly invested with the nature of Man, but endowed now with resistless powers. The gods are conceived of as a part of Nature, but still able to control it; they are amenable to reason, and may be swayed by the persuasions of their votaries. They are represented by images embodying to some extent the human ideas as to their power and nature. In this stage advancement is clearly shown by the forms chosen to embody the ideals of the Divine, and thus in it we have a progression from the awful images found in Indian and Mexican temples to those wonderful attempts of the Grecian mind to portray divinity through the idealized human form. The Hebrews reached eventually the final stage when God becomes the Author of and not merely a part of Nature. In this stage he becomes for the first time a really supernatural being. When this conception is fully formed in the mind, morality becomes a necessary part of religion, and men strive to model themselves after the ideal of perfection which they associate with their concept of Deity. It is thus step by step that man progresses from the state of ignorance and indifference to that m which the knowledge of God becomes the aim of life and the source of all true happiness.
"Since all things suffer change
Save God, the Truth,
Men apprehend Him newly
At each stage."
The difference between this kind of evolution and that which makes man's progress a return to a former fully rounded concept, a slow recovery of what has been lost, is of course great, but one can hold either view and still find himself within Scripture bounds, for in the Scriptures the progress of man is sketched in the barest outline and not given in detail. As the Bible deals in detail chiefly with a part of the history of the Chosen people, rather than with the history of the race, we find incidental confirmation of this doctrine of a slow development of the concept of God in the gradual advancement which the chosen people made toward the monotheistic conception which was general among the Hebrews in the time of Christ. We find it also in those slight details concerning other people which are scattered here and there through the various books. From these it would appear that the call of Abraham was to break away from such conceptions of the Divine nature as were held commonly by all the people of his time, and that his special mission was to establish a peculiar people in whom there might be developed such ideals as would prepare the way for the manifestation of God in Christ.
THE WORD "GOD."
Max Muller, in his "Science of Language," says that "it is impossible to give a satisfactory etymology of either of the words 'God,' or 'good,' but that it is clear that these two words which run parallel, but never meet in all the dialects based on the Teutonic, can not be traced back to one central point. 'God' was most likely an old heathen name for a tribal deity, and for such a name the supposed etymological meaning of 'good' would be far too abstract, too modern, and too Christian." It has been a favorite thought in connection with our modern use of the term God, that it was based on the fundamental idea of Goodness, and that it could be taken as an embodiment of an ancient ideal of perfection in which the conception of perfect goodness governed all other conceded elements in the Divine Nature. But, as Muller has shown, we are too apt to read into the ancient words our modem conceptions, especially when we can, by so doing, bolster up some favorite theological dogma of our own. Because we find words nearly alike in form or sound we jump to the conclusion that they must of necessity have come from the same root, and therefore embrace the same fundamental idea. It is true that in this case we now give to the words meanings which bring them into relationship, but it is probably true that originally the term "God" was a local name for some Teutonic powerful tribal deity, which name gradually received a more extended application until it finally ripened into the grand conception with which it is now associated, and which has made it the greatest word in our language, as the conception it now embodies is the greatest man is capable of entertaining.
THE HEBREW NAMES.
Let us now return to our direct examination of the words or names which in general use embodied the popular thought of Deity. ELOHIM, the generic name, occurring rarely in the singular, is found more than two thousand times in the plural, and always with a verb in the singular. According to Gesenius, EL is the earlier form, and was perhaps originally nothing more than a special name for some particular local deity, which short form in time grew into the later and longer form, although this was never used to the exclusion of the shorter and earlier word. It is possible that like the Chaldaic word BEL, the Babylonian form of BAAL, the Phoenician Sun-god and chief deity, EL had at first as its root meaning "Master" or "Professor," or "High One," "Exalted" (compare AL, summit), from which meanings the transition to the later meanings and use to which it was applied was easy. I am aware of the etymological difficulty which attends the connection of these words, for while BEL is not only similar in sound to BAAL, it is also like it in form. EL is in form no way similar to BAAL, but is near to AL. It is possible that in the wonderful experiences of the Hebrew people, including among the Hebrew people the ancestral Aramaen stock from whence that people came, there arose a necessity for a deliberate alteration of the form though not the sound of the words associated with the idea of Deity, in order to emphasize the difference between the Phoenecian and Hebrew ideals. Thus Ain would become Aleph, which often occurred. However this may be, it is beyond dispute that the term EL was not held in as high esteem as the specific name of JEHOVAH, for it was used at times in connection with false gods (Exodus xix :20, xxxii :31, Jeremiah ii:II ); it was applied to spirits and supernatural beings (I. Sam. xxviii:13), and even to kings, judges and magistrates, who are held to be vicegerents of God (Ex. xxi:6, xxii:8, Psalm Ixxxii:1, and elsewhere) . In all of these instances where it is used it carries with it the primary idea of lordship, and indicates that a familiarity with this meaning was common among the people. It would also seem evident that the term EL was seldom regarded as a sufficient characterization, for it is generally coupled with some qualifying word which adds power to the generic name. Thus when Melchizedek speaks to Abram he uses the name EL ELYON (God Most High), while Abram in his answer still further amplifies the name by the addition of JEHOVAH (Gen. xiv:19), as though there might be a difference in the conception of Deity held by the two. If it be said that the Scriptures declare that Abram did not know God by His name of Jehova, it can only be said that the term is put in his mouth as part of his speech to Melchizedek, and it must be the task of some one at some other time to handle the question of Redaetor, Elohist and Jehovist. Here we refer to it to show that the meaning of "lordship" and "possession" is attached to the use of EL, and its compounds, indicating its close affinity to the Phoenician concept of EAAL, for you will notice that in the ascription of power in the blessing of Abram, Melchizedek distinctly uses the further term of amplification, "Possessor," which is sometimes translated as "Maker," and is so given in the margin of the Revised Version. In the vision of Abram, when the future greatness of the Chosen people was revealed to him, Abram uses the name JEHOVA again, but couples it with the term "ADONAI," or Lord, evidently going back to the original concept, but using another term than EL. If these terms were put into Abram's mouth in later times, it is apparent that so far as the time of the writer was concerned the people entertained no doubt as to the content of the name ELOHIM, and used it in the same sense of the writers of antiquity, as requiring more or less of amplification to make it identical with the specific name JEHOVAH. We have seen this in the case of Melchizedek, and EL ELYON, and we find it again in the use of the name EL SHADAI, as when Abraham was ninety-nine years of age. This name, so frequently used in the Old Testament, carries with it the concept of Omnipotence, and makes a strong contrast to the recognized weakness of the country gods. Thus also in Deut. x:17 we have a perfect identification of ELOHIM with power, where He is said to be "JEHOVAH your ELOHIM," who is a "ELOHIM of ELOHIM," and a "great ELOHIM," "ADONAI of ADONAIS," a recognition of the attribute which was most nearly associated with perfection in the Hebrew mind, and like the other qualifications of the term EL it was an indication of growth, and of clearer perception of the Divine nature.
Another application of the root idea is found in the use of the word for tree, "Ela," to be strong, especially of palm and oak; "exalted" and "durable," where the word Elon is used. In the plural we have for groves the word "Elim" (Palms) which became in a double sense appropriate when trees were adored and the groves became the seats of public worship, similar in kind to the cult of the Baal Bamoth. Of course, in time the root meaning of such words as these became lost to the common minds, and only those meanings were recognized which were directly identified with the latter usage. This was certainly the case with the word "Terephim," which at first when it appears has the meaning of household gods. These might be small enough to be carried concealed in a saddle, but later we find them at least as large as a man, for the wife of David uses one to deceive those sent by her father, to seize her husband, and as it lay in the bed upon which they looked it must have been as large as a man, or it would have failed of its purpose. Perhaps, like images of Hermes, they were often only a bust on a pedestal, but it is likely that they generally were large enough to fulfill all the purposes of a family Ephod or idol, always ready for consultation. As they were part of the furniture of David's house, and also of Jacob's, and were so highly prized by them all, it is certain that at first the idea of God held by these men and others of their times was flexible enough to admit what afterwards was made the subject of the most stringent prohibitive legislation. A household image of EL later could not be tolerated, for the idea of God had gained in definiteness, and more perfect spirituality.
The name of Baal Berith in Judges 9:46 is evidently intended to be the same as El Eerith in the eighth chapter and thirty-third verse, and this will bear out the contention that "El" and "Baal" are common names for the same conception of Lordship and also show that it was not out of place to apply either of the names. Certainly if the idea contained in Baal was altogether repugnant to the Hebrew concept of God there were frequent and unexpected departures from the right application of the term. Even Gideon was called Jerubbaal (Baal contends), while Saul named one of his sons Ishbaal (the man of Baal), and Jonathan's son was named Meribbaal. A father would scarcely put his own son under the ban by affixing a name conveying an evil impression, which would be the case were the compounds of Baal indicative of proscribed worships If El Berith and Baal Berith are acceptably synonymous and connect the two terms El and Ball in acceptable and interchangeable relations, these must have been understood to have existed elsewhere in the common usage of the people. It thus would have been as proper then for Haggar to have used the name "Baal Roi," for "God of seeing," as the name "El Roi," which she did use. In her time and with the feebler concept which was then held, there would have been no disrespect shown by the use of such a name as Baal from a woman filled with gratitude for a special deliverance from a greater danger. The close relation in the popular mind between the two terms would have made the use of either an indication of great thankfulness for relief. God saw her and heard her prayer, and she called Him by the name most familiar to her, while the other would have been used by another person of that time under similar circumstances.
THE SPECIAL NAME JEHOVA.
We come now to a consideration of the Special name used by the Hebrews to designate God. We are not so much at a loss as to the root meaning of the word JEHOVA. Whatever may have been the method of pronouncing the name, we have the idea of Beings Existence, independent of causation and as essential to the nature of God. This name in its several forms was to the Jews the great and sacred Name of such wonderful import. Its utterance was so strongly prohibited that at last its rightful pronunciation was lost, and we are left with no clue to the mystery. The sounds of the vowel points of the other names of God, "ELOHIM" and "ADONAI," were used instead of the rightful name, in consequence of misinterpreting Ex. 20:7, Lev. 24:11, 15, Deut. 28:58, and others. What the real vowels and consequently the proper pronunciation should be, is not known. It is probable that, like EL, this name was either of Phoenician or Aramaen origin, and when appropriated received an added meaning. Etymologically it is closely related to the Phoenician name for the Sun-god "IOA," which Name was also used in Chalelaic in the same form of "IOA" for "The Intelligent Light," and the transition from this idea to that of "I am that I Am" - Self Existence or Pure Being - was easy and natural. The Egyptian temple of Isis at Sais had this inscription: "I am what was, and is, and is to come. No mortal hath yet unveiled me." Compare, "Jesus the same yesterday today and forever," and Rev. 1:4, with the meaning given to Moses at the Burning Bush. It is the other contents of the concept in this name which indicate the great advancement which use assures. In its enlarged meaning EL became the "Master," "Maker," and "Possessor," but while heaven and earth are His, there is no trace of close appropriation and special relation. Other nations had "ELOHIM" in common with the Hebrews, and were as much entitled to their protection but the use of the new special name with its larger content introduces the idea of Hebrew independence. JEHOVAH to them is the National God, and as such He is conceived of as above all other gods; and as for the nation it should know no others. He becomes the "Preserver" of the nation, and sustains a peculiar relation of intimacy with all of the stock of Abraham. He becomes naturally the Theocratic Ruler, the "First and the Last," still more the "ONLY TRUE GOD," the Ever-Living "Defender," the "LORD OF HOSTS." Intimately associated with the name of JEHOVAH, all of the legislation of the nation was based on the Theocratic idea. The supreme civil rule, whether Lawgiver, Military Leader, Judge or King, all were the vicegerents of JEHOVAH, and the High Priest was His spokesman, as were also the Prophets appearing from time to time in the crises of the national life. The explicit declaration that the name JEHOVA was not known until its revelation to Moses at the Burning Bush involves us in a difficulty which vanishes when we agree with the higher critics that this statement is part of the late Priestly Code, and reflects only a backward light along the course of history. But it is not necessary to resort to this dismemberment of the Book, for it is possible to find in the development of the Hebrew ideal from the time of the Patriarchs sufficient advancement to make the name practically new, and certainly new as to its content. There is a vast difference between the name of a merely local god, even the "God of the Thunderstorm," such as JEHOVAH evidently was originally, and that larger concept of Leadership, and Omnipotent Beings endowed with the specific attributes of Righteousness and Holiness, and sustaining such close relations to all the details of government which became the content of the Name later.
THE INNER MEANING.
What then is the later inner meaning of the chosen name of Deity given to Moses at the Mount? "HIH" is the imperfect tense of the very TO BE, of which the present tense form is "IHIH." By apocopated form the first person is "IHI." The meaning was a growth.
We learn that the name itself then was a symbol of Creation, an anagram, and that in the special forms in which it was sometimes written was embodied the conception of the union of God with His creations, as expressed in the Universe. The letter H was considered to be the agent of Almighty power, and as this was found in all the pronouns which designated sex, and was also more than any other letter in evidence in the special Divine name, it was felt that the great mystery of Fatherhood and Motherhood, the idea of power of reproduction was concealed in the Name. As other religions were based on Nature worship, and as that was most familiar to those who had been under the influence of Egypt, and who were environed by tribes whose worship was of the same sexual type, the Israelites doubtless in the earliest times made the name JEHOVAH contain much of the dogma with which they were most familiar. A reversal of the letters gave the personal sex pronouns, the male and female, and thus they could contemplate with the concept of Being that thought which in Egypt was wrapped up in the names "Isis," "Osiris" and Chorus," and which, in the land of their own inheritance, confronted them in the yearly feasts of the Canaanites and veiled itself in the lamentations of the women over the death of "Tammuz," slain in the darkness of the North. In JEHOVAH all sex was contained, hence none could be slain, and all had continuing life. He was therefore the only True God, as the only one not subject to evil power.
THE ATTRIBUTES.
Moses learned in Egypt the doctrine of God as Eternal, Invisible, Omniscient, Just and Powerful. Those attributes attached themselves to the "Jehovah" of the Mountains, and henceforth were part of the concept. The Mountain and Desert tribes knew "Jehovah," but to them He was the "God of the Thunderstorm," "the God of Lightning." We believe this, because it seems reasonable to suppose that as Moses found the name "JEHOVAH" at the Burning Bush in the Sianitic region where he lived for so many years, that the name was familiar to the people who lived thereabout, who were probably of the same original stock as Israel, and more, that it could not have been an unfamiliar name to the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, for it was to be to them the assurance of the Divine approval of their Exodus. It was to be a Name to establish immediate confidence, and must have meant to the Children of Israel a powerful protector, more than the equal of the united gods of Egypt. Evidently the name JEHOVAH represented to them the most powerful deity, who, while especially located at Sinai (as there it was that He had directly manifested Himself), yet was both able and willing to exert His power in behalf of the descendants of the Patriarchs. This idea of habitat or localization was held by the Hebrews fear a long time, and finds frequent expression. It was perhaps for this reason that they were so ready to take their journey into "the wilderness," knowing that they were going to the Mount of God, and could there enter into covenant relations with Him. Perhaps also, because of this idea of relation to the region of the great mountain, the association of the name "Adonai," the equivalent of "Moloch," or "Adonis," came into general use, for "Adonis" was a term for a principal god all along the coast which was dominated by the great Desert mountain. If the term "OLAM" (eternal) could be applied to BAAL, BEL, MOLOCH, and ADONAI, it would of course be part of the enlarged concept of JEHOVAH, when all the attributes of these powerful deities were passed over to him as the proper attributes of the National God.
THE SUN GOD
In Egypt, when Israel was led by Moses, the sun-god was "Ammon-Ra," for while Ammon, the supreme, was originally the "concealed god," and regarded like Jupiter as "the father of gods and men," he became associated in the common mind with "Ra," and the two were recognized in the Sun. "Ammon-Ra" was thus the equivalent of "Appollo," the sungod of the Greeks, and "Baal," the sun-god of the Phoenecians, and "Bel," the sun-god of Babylon, and "Asshur," the sun-god of the Assyrians, while he also contained the enlarged idea of supremacy with which the Greeks and Romans invested their "Zeus" and "Jupiter." The Persian "Mithra," the god of fire and light, and thus the sun-god, was not represented by images, but in all these other instances where the names indicated that substantially the same belief obtained, the "Ephod" or image was a necessary part of the furniture of the Temple) a more approachable representation of the Deity than the fierce and distant sun. The Persians conceived also of a Creator who was beyond and superior to the sun, and of whom the glorious sun was a symbol - "Ahura-Mazda," or "Ormudz," who was "invisible and eternal and righteous," a far loftier conception than that embodied in Jupiter. To this Persian concept doubtless the Jews owed much of the content of their own later thought of Deity. As commerce and other relations were close for many centuries, it is reasonable to suppose that what was best and loftiest was appropriated and made part of the concept of JEHOVAH. As the loftiest thought and most advanced ideals were there found, it was to be expected that the developing Nation would make use of the intellectual conquests of the other. It was this discriminating and extensive appropriation of ideas which finally completed the Hebrew concept of the Most High.
SACRIFICE AND WORSHIP
Another side-light slowing development concerns the recognition of human sacrifice, which under certain conditions, was not only allowable at first but was to be commended. The cruel sacrifice of the male firstborn to "Moloch" or ''Adonis'' among the Hebrews was commuted by the consecration of the first-born to the service of JEHOVAH, and by exchange made the Levites servants (slaves) of JEHOVAH, bound to His service, and with their lives at His disposal. That the first-born were not slain was not because the rite was altogether abhorrent, for even in late times it was common, but because, as in the case of Abraham, a substitute was provided, both for person and for worsen. There was no substitute for Jeptha's daughters In the mails, it can hardly be denied that the cult associated with the name JEHOVAH was due largely, so far as form was concerned, to the influence of the Canaanite and Egyptian people, the former always active until fully absorbed in Israel. But sacrifice and worship was the bond between the children of Israel and their God, and as JEHOVAH was their God, and not the God of any other people, whatever was borrowed from the Canaanites or other nations became holy, when it was used only to still further honor Him, and make His presence and power more manifest. The idea of sacrifice among the Baal worshippers was that it partook of the nature of a bribe to turn away anger, or a gift to win favor, and the ordinary mind among the Hebrews so associated these thoughts with the sacrificial service to JEHOVAH, that it had to be clearly and constantly taught that the most acceptable service was not sacrifice but heart service and holiness. Until the element of personal righteousness entered into the scheme of life as that which would make men most acceptable to JEHOVAH, because most like Him, the worship of Israel differed but little except in name from the worship of BAAL or ADONIS, or BEL, or RA. It was the enlarged conception of the nature of God which worked the complete change, but the change needed centuries. Even until the time of Christ the influence of the early cult inherited from the Canaanites was discernible. For one thing, the rise of the priestly office itself, evidenced the influence of the BAAS cult, for until in late times the priestly function in sacrifice and prayer was part of the investiture of the head of the household It was when it became necessary to hear the voice of the Oracle that some consecrated person was called in, and generally in early times this was a person who possessed an "Ephod," or image of God, but when the concept of JEHOVAH was filled out by the absorption or adoption of the desirable attributes of other gods, the development of a settled priesthood and an orderly service was natural. As long as Israel was nomadic it was not possible to have more than the germ of the magnificent service which grew into completeness with the permanent location of shrines and temples.
THE TEMPLE.
For a simple wandering people the simplest form of altar was sufficient, and the sacrifice one which could be offered by any person. This was at first in the nature of a meal provided for JEHOVAH, of which the offerer partook with all his household as guests of God. These simple essentials were enough to give scope to the reverent feelings of the soul, and renew the bond between JEHOVAH and His people. Worship then was in simple form, without money and without price or toll to priestly intercessor, totally unlike what it became in those later years when a numerous priesthood held the keys of heaven and made worship a matter of much cost to the worshipper and of gain to the priest who officiated. The Patriarchs had built up their rude altars wherever the spirit moved them, and the names which they gave to them were indicative of the spiritual experience through which they had passed in that place, but later on when the growth of Priesthood and the broadened concept of God led to an amplified ritual of worship, the early freedom which prompted men to build simple altars was lost, and the more elaborate ritual required instead the maintenance of the great Temple even at the sacrifice of the earlier shrines. The thought was if JEHOVAH could be induced to leave the Mount of Manifestation, His favorite abode, it would be when He had a suitable House for a habitation, a House more perfect in all its appointments than any which had ever been erected to BAAL or other of the country gods. To maintain such a Temple and its Priesthood properly would require the united support of all the people, and the abolition of local Temples (Bamoth), which were, after the manner of the Canaanites, common on the high places and in the groves throughout the land. The presence of JEHOVAH sanctified the Temple above all other shrines, and made it the peculiarly appropriate place for all the people to worship, and made certain the voice of the Oracle to those who had desire to consult it. Thus when the Temple was completed and all the courses of priestly service fully established, the influence of the Temple enlarged the concept of God held by the people and finally led to a partial abandonment of the simpler practices which, in the earlier times, were associated with the name EL. The people had then left the more simple service, with a more simple Name, and its concept, and yet had carried into the enlarged service all of the more valuable elements pertaining to the older. Thus it is still possible to see in the Temple the necessary development of what had gone before. But the Temple itself was mainly a reproduction of the older Temple of Baal in its forts as well as in the arrangement of much of its ceremonial, and it is this power of adaptation and of appropriation of all that was best in what had gone before, which made the strength of the Jehovistic worship. It was as though out of the mire and filth of idolatry the jewel of faith was rescued and was made to do service in the adornment of true worship. The Targum says that originally "Abraham was called from the service and worship of the stars in order that the nation to be born from him might be established in the worship of Him who made the stars, and Arab tradition has it that even in their own land it was hard to hold back the people from the worship of the heavenly bodies until in the Temple they behold the glory of JEHOVAH. Out of the false beliefs, the superstitions and vanities which environed them, and by the natural yet slow process of growth and absorption of whatever was found most fit, was built up at last that which has, in the goodness of God, resulted to the advantage of all the races and all the ages of Man. Through feebleness and uncertainty, often in conflict with those things which the world has found most degrading, yet still ever impelled by spiritual forces not apprehended at the time, the Hebrew mind was led from gross darkness into more of the divine brightness than any other people of old enjoyed.
CONCLUSION
From all this then we come to the conclusion that the special name of God meant originally only that JEHOVAH was the National God of Israel, and that it was not till late in the National development that the Name grew into the broadened conception of the God of the Universe, the only true and the only wise, besides whom was none other. It is true also that the Name became an anagram, and that even Moses allowed the people to retain many of the older ideas, the ideas of the fathers and of Egypt and that these were finally dropped, enlarged, or purified in the moral development of the Nation. In this respect Israel, then, is an example of the normal course of moral anti spiritual development through which many other people have already passed or must pass. The germ or seed thought which made development along right lines possible to them was the idea that God took a personal and direct interest in the welfare and concerns of His people. In a peculiar sense He became to the people Isarel's God to whom they could look for help in time of trouble, and whose Justice was infallible. They began National life by struggles against better equipped people for the possession of Canaan, hence the prominence of the militant ideal. JEHOVAH was a Mighty War-God - EL TSABAOTH - the Lord of Hosts, the Mighty Defender, whose presence was light and glory to Israel, but darkness and disaster to all enemies. Thus the concept grew as did the Nation, until He became to them the Alpha and Omega - IOA - the All in All, not only for Israel and on Earth, but for the Universe of which He was the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer, EL SHADAI, the Everlasting Father, in whom all live and move and have their being - a fitting preparation for God manifest in Christ.
Our study of the subject has led us to the following convictions:
First. That climatic and purely physical conditions affect the idea of God which men hold, and that this to a large extent conditioned the earlier concept which appears in Hebrew history.
Second. That the amplified conception of God was an evidence of mental energy, and also an indication of spiritual development, such a conception being necessarily based upon enlarged ideals only possible to those whose intellectual growth had outworn the narrower limits of the earlier age, and whose spiritual development had awakened loftier moral ideas.
Third. Every change in the National character was a direct consequence of a change in the National ideal of God, for while the change was at first an individual one, it spread so rapidly that soon it embraced the people as a whole. Moses was one man, but he was able to matte JEHOVAH a reality to all his people.
Fourth. The final Theology of the Hebrew people was a natural outgrowth of the final idea of JEHOVAH, coupled with the National development, and testifies to the strong influence of environment, as well as to the bitter experiences through which the people were called to pass.
Fifth. The ideal embodied in the name JEHOVAH has broadened and enlarged during each century since first the Name was given at the Burning Bush, and each century has had some part in shaping the final concept and has also contributed something of value to it drawn from its own experience.
Sixth. The Masonic use of the Name has been helpful to the enlargement of the concept, in that it has made the moral attributes prominent in all its work, and has sought to develop the spiritual side of men through the emphasis which it places upon the duty of worship and service, as well as by the stimulus which it gives to the study of the Divine character as exhibited in the Universe.
Seventh. The present Masonic use of the Name is meaningless if there be and departure from the homage which the principles of Masonry inculcates, and the use of the Great Light is an emphatic declaration that Masonry recognizes righteousness as the source of its power and the assurance of its continuance and prosperity, and that the protection of the Most High is given in answer to the prayer of faith, which itself is consequent upon a high ideal of the Divine Nature.
"Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man."- POPE.
WHAT the study of mankind is man is as true today as when the thought was uttered by the poets and the teachers of ages past. Man's greatest interest has always been in himself. No subject has so engaged his attention. From it he has learned to know his needs and his necessities, his desires and his ambitions, and he has striven, so far as has been within his power, to satisfy and gratify them. It is the study of himself that has caused him to consider his fellowman, the relationship which he bears and the duties which he owes to him, and it has also led him to a contemplation of the divine. Plato's exhortation, "Know Thyself," is the expression of the same thought, but subjective rather than objective. It is this study of himself that has caused man to rise above his environments and brought about the advancement, the elevation and the improvement of the human race.
And what an improvement there has been, what an advancement he has made! The most imaginative of the minds of the past, yes, even the most visionary, could not have conceived of, much less have comprehended, man's condition in the present age.
History delights to dwell upon the golden age of Rome - Rome, mistress of the seas, center of civilization, home of the arts and the sciences, of sculpture and of painting. We read of glorious conquests in war, her great and renowned men, her glorious festivals, the beauties of her architecture, her sculpture and her paintings the golden age of Rome, and fancy pictures all that is great and glorious and beautiful. Great, indeed, she was in all her glory, but the glory faded and passed away, as do all things whose foundations are laid in the quicksands of error and not upon the rocks of everlasting truth.
Let us pause for a moment and consider the basic principles upon which that superstructure was reared and without the enforcement of which it was believed human society could not exist.
According to their views the state was everything, the individual nothing. Man existed but for the purposes of the state, and was valuable only so far as he was of value to the state. They assumed that in the beginning came government and then came man, and their beliefs are diametrically opposed to our present beliefs that government exists for the benefit of mankind and not mankind for the benefit of government.
Again mankind was divided and classified, the nobility and aristocracy, the plebian or common people, and beneath these were the slaves. A slave, who might be one taken captive in war and of equal intelligence and education with his master, was property, and as such was bartered and bought and sold. As property his life was of no particular consequence and might be taken by his master with impunity. And woman, man's only peer, was little better than a slave. If married she was the property of her husband, if unmarried she was the property of her father. Like a slave, she had no rights, and having no rights she could get no redress for wrongs. What a contrast to the fundamental principles of all enlightened governments of today that in the eyes of the law all men are equal, that the life of one human being is as valuable as the life of another, and that neither government nor man dare take a life without a most just and sufficient reason.
And the conception of the relationship of man to his Creator - death was the end of all. Except among some of the philosophers, there was no belief in a hereafter, although thought and abstract theories were carried to their highest points, the deepest recesses of the mind explored, the boldest speculations upon the nature of the soul and its spiritual existence originated and carried out. The grave was the end of all.
And the principle of the brotherhood of man, so potent a factor in the world today, did not, it could not, exist. The old primitive truth had been lost sight of, nor was it restored until the cry of the down-trodden of France, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY shook the earth to its very foundations and welled in the hearts of men. The heralding of that principle stirred mankind from their lethargy and brought about the final and complete overthrow of all those principles which made the greatness and the glory of Rome. Man to-day can look down from a most exalted position upon the past ages of the world.
But, my brethren, we are far from perfection. We practice the great principle of the brotherhood of man but partially, and we have much to strive for. Selfishness is our greatest curse, and moral weakness in doing our duty is out greatest handicap. "Count that day lost whose low descending sun, views from thy hand no worthy action done" should be the rule and guide of our lives; not for ourselves but for others, should be our motto; and to endeavor to do something in the cause of humanity that shall live when we are dead, should be our purpose. Life is action, noblest action, and it is not measured by time. To do nothing worth doing is no more than to sleep, and what were life if it were but one continuous sleep:
"We live in deeds, not in years; in thoughts, not breaths,
In feeling, not in letters on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He lives most
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."
Let us believe, my brethren, that man will move steadily onward, that he will acquire the mental light which will enable him to see the right, and the moral courage to do the right as he sees it. And finally, let us have faith in humanity, and in the coming of the day when life and light and love shall be the one great law of the universe and its eternal harmony.