The Builder Magazine 

June 1918 - Volume IV - Number 6 


THE DIVINE GEOMETRY 

BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, IOWA 

Text: Proverbs 8:27, "he set a compass upon the face of the deep." 

AFTER Euclid had shown Ptolemy his treatise on geometry the king inquired, 
somewhat wistfully, "Cannot the problems be made easier?" to which the geometer 
replied, "There is no royal road to geometry." True enough, but geometry itself is a 
royal road, and one that will lead us to Divine things if we will but follow it, as I now 
ask you to do. 


It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to retrace our steps into the ancient day when 
men had not yet learned the orderliness of nature. Before the calendar was discovered 
or clocks invented the navigator steered his ship by the landmarks on the coast, and 
the farmer planted his crops by chance, for it was not known that the seasons repeat 
their regular ritual or that the heavens are ruled by order. "They saw things come and 
saw them go, but whence or whither they could not know." Everything changed or 
passed away and all things seemed to be in an eternal flux. In the midst of that 
everlasting stream of circumstance, that wildering maze of vicissitude, the early 
people felt helpless, if not mocked, for it always seemed that Nature was making sport 
of them. Even Renan, so far removed from them in time, recognized the pathos of 
this, for he said that "Nothing is so painful as the universal flow of things," while 
Tennyson set the mood to his music of accustomed sweetness: 


The hills are shadows, and they flow 
From form to form, and nothing stands; 
They melt like mist, the solid lands, 



Like clouds they shape themselves, and go. 


If the mutability of all things was so oppressive to the recent thinkers, having at their 
hand science's unveiling of the lucid order of the universe, how much more painful 
must it have seemed to human minds before science came! "We are strangers before 
thee," they cried in their prayers, "and sojourners, as all our fathers were: our days on 
the earth are as a shadow, and there is no abiding." 


Little wonder that the discovery of the North Star, one fixed body among all the others 
that moved perpetually, was an event of such importance that the simple folk 
worshipped it as a god and hung its symbol above the altars of their temples ! Little 
wonder that Heraclitus, the first thinker to state the fact with the thoroughness and 
system of philosophy, was called "The Weeping Philosopher !" Where there is no 
stability the mind hangs in the air and grows weary like a land bird at sea that finds no 
solid ground for its feet. 


It was for this reason that the discovery of numbers, and especially of geometry, 
which is the application of numbers to form, was hailed as a visitation from on high. 
This discovery was not made in a day but came so gradually that men could hardly 
discern the lifting of the changing mists. And it was after this wise it came, if we have 
rightly pieced together the fragments of the story. The Egyptians lived along the Nile, 
their fields lying adjacent to its current in order to profit from the rich deposits of its 
overflow. But this very flood itself, source as it was of all fertility, gave rise to great 
difficulties, for the rising waters obliterated all landmarks each season and thus caused 
confusion among the owners of the fields. It was in their efforts to discover some 
method of fixing their boundaries that the Egyptians learned how to trace out the 
regular motions of the heavens, the periodicity of the seasons, and the properties of 
numbers. How much the race is indebted to those sun-browned workers in the 
fluviatile valley nobody can compute ! 


Inasmuch as numbers had won them order from chaos of their first impressions these 
early peoples exalted mathematics to the level of divinity, seeing in it, and rightly we 
may believe, a revelation, an uncovering, of the Creative Mind. Triangles and squares 
were engraved on their monuments and hung in their temples. The numbers three, five 



and seven were held especially sacred for in them were many qualities not possessed 
by other numerals. The cult of numbers arose at last and men formed secret societies 
for studying and teaching the properties of geometry. 


It was among these secret societies that there came at a later day Pythagoras, one of 
the noblest of all thinkers, and the first to raise mathematics to the level of an exact 
science. From his hidden schools in Greece he taught his initiates the mystery of 
arithmetic, calling God "the Great Geometrician" and telling his pupils that "All 
things are in numbers; crystals are solid geometry." 


Plato, also, the most opulent thinker of antiquity, found in geometry a revelation of 
the Infinite Mind, looking upon it as the very essence of religion, the knowledge of 
God. "What does Deity do all the while?" one of his pupils asked him. "God is always 
geometrizing," was the reply. "Geometry must ever tend to draw the soul towards 
truth." Over the portal of his school he inscribed the legend: "Let no one who is 
ignorant of geometry enter my doors." 


What science is to all modem thinking the one science of mathematics, "the sacred 
mathematics," was to early thinking; and those first teachers felt it a sacred duty to 
transmit so valuable a knowledge to their descendants. Therefore was it that, three 
hundred years before Christ, Euclid wrote the treatise in which he embodied all that 
was known of the science at that time. Indeed, the work of Euclid is still the standard 
treatise on the subject, being used as the basis of every textbook in our schools. Better 
methods for proving the problems have been worked out, and new propositions have 
been discovered, but the fundamentals stand like adamant, and always will stand. 


After the breakup of the ancient world and the general inundation of culture under the 
Barbarian Invasion, geometry was lost. For hundreds of years the people of Europe 
wandered among the mazes of chance and caprice, as primitive men had done before 
them. Then at last along came Simon Grynaeus, a contemporary of Luther, who 
rediscovered Euclid and gave his science to the new peoples. How much this 
influenced the Reformation no historian has yet undertaken to estimate but it is certain 
that it had far reaching consequences and paved the way for modem science, which is 
itself a superstructure built on mathematics. 



If the earlier peoples were overjoyed to make their few discoveries of the hidden but 
fixed order of Nature how delighted they would now be to learn that all the endeavors 
of science have only served to make more clear and more universal the reign of 
number and form throughout the universe. For through a prophetic inspiration of the 
geometers we have had uncurtained to us a spectacle of mathematical order 
throughout the universe which is as revealing as it is beautiful. 


Matter itself, immobile as it may appear to the eye, is in reality a composite of atoms 
that move through the mazes of an everlasting dance, every evolution of which seems 
timed to some exact pattern. Even the chemical elements, which so long baffled the 
system makers, were proved by Newlands to lie in a regular order of periodicity 
strangely grouped around the number seven. Order is the first law of the elements. 
Crystallization is a solid geometry. If one observes ice crystals forming across a 
window pane he will see them grouping themselves together into symmetrical forms, 
intricate, involved, beautiful, as if some unseen artist were at work depicting a scene 
from an arctic fairyland. 


Even when life gathers matter up about itself into its organisms the same rhythm is 
preserved. Vitality is free and flowing, often apparently erratic, and moving by the 
law of its own, yet it will always be found at last to keep step with the geometrical 
motions of the world. If one would expect the eternal harmony absent from any field 
surely it would be in that little known realm which the insects inhabit; yet John Henri 
Fabre was so impressed by the reign of numbers among these insignificant creatures 
that he was moved to write this magnificent paragraph: 


"He will admire as much as we do geometry the eternal balancer of space. There is a 
severe beauty, belonging to the domain of reason, the same in every world, the same 
under every sun, whether the suns be single or many, white or red, blue or yellow. 
This universal beauty is order. Everything is done by weight and measure, a great 
statement whose truth breaks upon us all the more vividly as we probe more deeply 
into the mystery of things. Is this order, upon which the equilibrium of the universe is 
based, the predestined result of a blind mechanism? Does it enter into the plans of an 
eternal Geometer, as Plato had it? Is it the ideal of a supreme lover of beauty, which 
would explain everything? Why all this regularity in the curve of the petals of a 



flower, why all this elegance in the chasings on a beetle's wing-cases? Is that infinite 
grace, even in the tiniest details compatible with the brutality of uncontrolled forces? 
One might as well attribute the artist's exquisite medallion to the steamhammer which 
makes the slag sweat in the melting ! " 


The "regularity in the curve of the petals of the flower" has attracted the attention of 
others as well as Fabre. Maeterlinck, who learned so much from the veteran French 
naturalist, made a prolonged study of the Mind that is at work in plants with what 
result anyone can read in a book of lovely pages, "The Intelligence of the Flowers." 
Why are leaves set around the stem in such mathematical regularity ? Why do flowers 
seem to love numbers, as the trilium is partial to three, and the rose to five ? Surely it 
must be because there is that in them which responds to the universal order. Like 
Plato's deity they are always geometrizing. 


An animal is a plant that has taken to moving about, and just because it is so often 
apparently ungovemed in its movements, we lose sight of the regular laws which rule 
among animals as much as among plants and minerals. But those laws are there as 
many a scientist has proved. In the Mid-nineteenth Century days, before the evolution 
theory was so well understood, men fell to theorizing as if the universe had happened 
into existence through chance. Life itself was defined as the result of a "fortuitous 
concourse of atoms." The absurdity of this "thinking"— it was really an abdication of 
thought— was never more clearly revealed than by the Duke of Argyll, whose work on 
"The Reign of Law" is almost classical. The learned Duke took the wing of a common 
bird and showed that the mechanism of flight is so unimaginably complicated, so 
perfect, and solves so many mathematical problems, many of them beyond the ken of 
a Lord Kelvin, that it tasks our credulity too much to be asked to believe that this 
exquisite machinery could possibly have come through "chance." In a more recent 
time, Sir Oliver Lodge has made the same use of the human eye, an organ so intricate 
and nice in its adjustments and functions, that a Swiss watch is simple by comparison. 


What is true of the things we find on the earth holds good in equal measure of the 
great bodies that sail round us through the sky. The astronomer's charts are strangely 
like a page of Euclid. He has found that order is the first law of the heavens as it is of 
Heaven. The wildest comet, careening irresponsibly through space, moves in an orbit 
as rigidly fixed as the passing of the hands about the clock. Surely it must be that an 
Infinite Mind has set His compasses upon the face of the deeps of space, else how 



explain the periodicity, the regularity, of the sidereal universe, the movement of any 
one body of which may be predicted for thousands of years in advance! 


This law of geometric harmony holds as true among the arts of man as in those realms 
which are the art of God. Every building is geometric demonstration. As we may read 
in the pages of a learned student of this: "The language (geometry) spoke in the 
sloping wall and massive pillar and flat roof of Egypt, or in the mighty piles of 
Chaldea, or in the Corinthian grace, or in Roman boldness; the heart was that of the 
geometrician who spoke as he dreamed, in anger, in epic, in poetry of stone and 
graceful curve— who planned by the plumb and the square, by the secret of the arch 
and the balance of accurate measure." 


Even painting, when lightly understood, conforms to the ancient patterns, being based 
on the principle described by one of its most magisterial exponents: "All nature is 
modelled either like a cone, a sphere or a cylinder. Painting is a colored mathematics 
of things." As for music, that is geometry that has taken to wings, its freedom 
evermore being inbound in law. It is the child of rhythm which is the purest 
manifestation of the law of numbers. From of old it has been dreamed that the 
morning stars sang together, that the rafters and beams of creation were laid deep in 
melody, that the spheres make music as they move, that all "deep things are song." Of 
this truth every musician is the priest as every poet is its apostle. As Dryden sings: 


"From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony 
This universal frame began; 

When Nature underneath a heap 

Of jarring atoms lay And could not heave her head, 

The tuneful voice was heard from high, 

Arise, ye more than dead! 

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry 



In order to their stations leap, 

And music's power obey. 

From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony 
This universal frame began: 

From harmony to harmony 

Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 

The diapason closing full in Man." 


Yes, in Man, truly, for order holds in the soul as much as in the heavens where the 
astronomer thinks God's thoughts after Him. Character is no chance product but builds 
according to laws as immutable and as ascertainable as any to be found in the builder's 
art. For the freedom of the soul is not capriciousness, least of all lawlessness, but 
voluntary co-operation with the fixed rules of the spirit. He who will build according 
to that principle will erect a character as stable as that house which the wise architect 
builded on the rock. Glorious will be the day when men leam the geometry of the 
heart and square their actions to the fixed rules of moral life. 


The significance of this geometry of the cosmos for our faith has been know ever 
since men discovered it. At bottom there ale but two philosophies: that which holds 
that this universe is a heap of dirt governed by chance; and that which finds in it a 
reasoned reign of order resting in an Infinite Mind. As between dirt and deity a man 
may make his choice, but surely the thinker who sees everywhere the beautiful sweep 
of order will not for a moment believe that this mighty music could have come to us 
out of the falling atoms of chance. One might as well throw a handful of type into the 
air and expect them to write a poem in their fall ! 


Twenty-five centuries ago Socrates labored to show the little atheist, Aristodemus, 
that as a statue by Polytectetus could not possibly have emerged from the quarries 
through mere chance, so is it impossible to believe that the cosmos, infinitely greater 
in complexity as well as in beauty, could ever have come into existence through mere 



fortuitousness. In the same wise, Franklin, who may typify the modem thinker, 
exposed the fallacy of an atheist astronomer friend of his. The astronomer was 
showing him an orrery, which is a working model of the solar system, when Franklin 
said, "It is strange that such a thing could build itself by chance." "Chance !" 
exclaimed the astronomer, "I made that myself. How could so complicated a device 
have come by chance?" "Then," said the philosopher, turning upon him, "how can you 
believe that the solar system itself, of which this is a mere model, could have come by 
chance ?" 


Surely, when we have our minds with us, it must be apparent that the everywhere 
present order of things is the revelation of a Divine Orderer! Where there is so much 
intelligence there must be an Intelligence! Where there is so much harmony there 
must stand near a great Musician! The poetry of earth is the song of an Infinite Poet! 
The beauty of all creation is the outshining, the splendor of an Eternal Artist ! 


Long ago a psalmist cried, "Whither shall I flee from Thy presence?" We cannot flee 
from His presence. While we dig in the dirt He is there, present in the dance of the 
atoms that compose the soil: while we walk through the snow He draws His pictures 
about us in the traceries of the crystals: the bird that wings above us is His angel, 
making hieroglyphics in the air: the very tides move along the circle which His 
compasses draw upon the deep. Everywhere He is. We live imbedded in His mind. To 
escape from Him is as impossible as to climb out of the atmosphere ! 


Where there is so much order all must be ordered. King Alphonso of Castile, looking 
out over the general muddle of affairs into which Spain had fallen, doubted that a 
Mind ruled all. "If God had called me to His councils," he sighed, "things would have 
been in better order." In these days when it seems that the bottom has gone out of the 
world and chaos has come again, we may fall into the mood of the old king. But let us 
despair not. The plain is there; we have lost the perspective, or the key. It is said that 
the frescoes on the ceiling of St. Peter's look like an inartistic jumble to the man who 
climbs close to them; but from a station three hundred feet below they spring up into a 
majestic beauty. They are wrought on too large a plan for a close view. We humans, 
with our near-sightedness, our myopic eyes, are standing too close to the program of 
creation; it may appear all jumble to us now. Let us wait with patience. Some 
morning, soon or late, will find us on a mountain of vision where we can see things as 
they are and watch the Divine Geometer draw His circles across the deep. 



O 


WHERE THE RAINBOW NEVER FADES 


It can not be that the earth is man's only abiding -place. It can not be that our life is a 
mere bubble cast up by eternity to float a moment on its waves and then sink into 
nothingness. Else why is it that the glorious aspirations which leap like angels from 
the temple of our hearts are forever wandering unsatisfied ? 


Why is it that all the stars that hold their festival around the midnight throne are set 
above the grasp of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable 
glory ? 


And, finally, why is it that bright forms of human beauty presented to our view are 
taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of our affections to flow back in Alpine 
torrents upon our hearts? 


There is a realm where the rainbow never fades; where the stars will be spread out 
before us like islands that slumber in the ocean; and where the beautiful beings which 
now pass before us like shadows will stay in our presence forever. -George D. 
Prentice. 




BOYHOOD HOME OF ALBERT PIKE 


BY BRO. HAROLD L. BAILEY. VERMONT 



Having noticed in a back issue of THE BUILDER a statement to the effect that you 
would like material relating to Albert Pike, I am sending you a photograph of the house 
in which he spent his boyhood. I made this photograph several years ago to illustrate a 
short write-up of the subject for the Boston Globe. 


A painted sign with its characters nearly effaced by time proclaims a deserted, 
weatherbeaten house in the parish of Byfield, Massachusetts, as the "Home of Gen. 
Albert Pike." Although not his birthplace it stands for all those things generally 
connected with a man's first days and years in the world. 


General Pike was bom in Boston, Dec. 29, 1 809, but was brought to this house when 
but a few days old. His boyhood days were spent in Byfield, and a letter from which 
Mr. John Ewell quotes in his "Story of Byfield," (George E. Littlefield, Boston, 1904, 
publisher) expresses General Pike's affection for his boyhood home. He said: 


"Many, many long years ago I gathered walnuts and shot squirrels on Long Hill. It 
saddens me to look back along the procession of departed years, and to remember how 
long the Future then seemed and how short the Past is. I wish I could be a boy for one 
single day again and ramble over Long Hill in the frosty air of October, and at night 
sleep the sound sleep of youth. . ." 


Byfield is the name of an old-time church parish, the territory of which embraced 
several towns. General Pike's home was in a section of the parish now included in the 
town of Georgetown, Essex County, about thirty miles north of Boston. 


— o — 


It is best to take life gladly as we strive, 



And best to face toil bravely day by day. 
We are companioned in this busy hive 
With other stragglers in this clay. 

No fate selects us solely for its mark, 

And no misfortune that can e'er befall 
But what find other stragglers in the dark, 
For care is common unto one and all. 




LAFAYETTE'S FRATERNAL CONNECTIONS 


BY BRO. JULIUS F. SACHSE, GRAND LIBRARIAN, PENNSYLVANIA 


Since the entry of America into the World War there have come to us many requests 
for information concerning that notable French ally of America during the War of the 
American Revolution, Brother General Lafayette. We were unable to learn but little 
concerning the Masonic connections of Brother Lafayette until we discovered, in the 
report of the Committee on Library of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania for 1916, 
notice of the proposed publication in pamphlet form of the following article by 
Brother Sachse. By permission of this Committee we are enabled to herewith present 
to our readers the result of Brother Sachse's researches. 


It is very unfortunate that the name of Brother Lafayette's, Mother Lodge is not 
known. Possibly some of our members may be able to further enlighten us on this 
subject. 



NO original documentary evidence is known to be in existence which records the 
initiation of General Lafayette in the Masonic Fraternity, nor in what Lodge or when 
this took place. It has always been a tradition in Masonic circles that General 
Lafayette was made a Mason in one of the Military Lodges at Morristown, New 
Jersey, where a Festal Lodge was held December 27, 1779, for which occasion the 
jewels and furniture and clothing of St. John's Lodge, No. 1, of Newark, New Jersey, 
was borrowed. The meeting proved a great success, sixty eight brethren being present, 
one of whom was General Washington. 


There is another tradition that General Lafayette was made a Mason in a Military 
Lodge, which met at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777-78, hut no official 
records of such action have thus far been discovered. 


It was this uncertainty as to the Masonic standing of General Lafayette, which led to 
the resolution of September 6, 1 824, in the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and the 
appointment of a Committee to satisfy themselves that General Lafayette was an 
Ancient York Mason. That the Committee was satisfied with their investigation is 
evinced by their report and the subsequent action of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 
which resulted in enrolling Brother General Lafayette an Honorary Member of the 
R.W. Grand Lodge, F. & A. M. of Pennsylvania. 


Brother General Marie Jean Paul Joseph Roche Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de 
Lafayette, revisited America in the year 1784, arriving at New York August 5 of that 
year. After remaining a short time in New York he hastened forward to visit General 
Washington at Mount Vernon, reaching Philadelphia on August 10, where he was 
presented with an address by Brothers A. St. Clair, William Irving and General 
Anthony Wayne. It is not known whether General Lafayette visited any Masonic 
Lodges in Philadelphia during this visit, nor whether there was any communication 
with the Grand Lodge. One of the chief objects of this visit with General Washington 
was to present him with a beautiful white satin apron bearing the national colors, red, 
white and blue and embroidered elaborately with Masonic emblems, the whole being 
the handiwork of Madam the Marquise de Lafayette. 



This apron was enclosed in a handsome rosewood box when presented to Washington. 
This apron was worn by Washington, September 18, 1793, when he laid the corner 
stone of the capitol at the Federal City (Washington, D. C.), and is now in the 
Museum of the Grand Lodge, F. & A. M., of Pennsylvania. After the death of 
Washington this Masonic relic was presented by the legatees to the Washington 
Benevolent Society, who received it October 26, 1816. They in turn presented it July 
3, 1829, to the Right Worshipful Grand Lodge, F. & A. M. of Pennsylvania, and bears 
the following inscription: 


"To the 


"WASHINGTON BENEVOLENT SOCIETY. 


"The Legatees of Gen. Washington, impressed with the most profound Sentiments of 
respect for the Institution which they have the honor to address, beg leave to present 
to them the enclosed relic of the revered & lamented 'Father of His Country.' They are 
persuaded that the Apron, which was once possessed by the man, whom the 
Philadelphians always delighted to honor, will be considered most precious to the 
Society distinguished by his name, and by the benevolent, and grateful feelings to 
which it owes its foundations. That this perishable memento of a Hero whose Fame is 
'more durable than Brass' may confer as much pleasure upon those to whom it is 
presented, as is experienced by the Donors. 


"October 26th, 1816, "Is the sincere wish of the "Legatees." Forty years later 
Brother Lafayette revisited the United States, landing at New York as the nation's 
guest, August 15, 1824. He was accompanied by his son George Washington 
Lafayette, and M. La Vasseur, his secretary, both members of the fraternity. Tuesday, 
September 29, the party reached Philadelphia. 


At the Grand Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania held 
September 6, 1 824, just ninety- four years ago, the following motion was made, 
seconded, and adopted: 



"Resolved, that a Committee consisting of the Grand Officers and Past Grand Masters 
be appointed to enquire whether General La Fayette be an Ancient York Master 
Mason, and if he be, to adopt such measures, as in their opinion will best evince the 
affection and gratitude of his Masonic Brethren, to this friend and benefactor of the 
United States." 


At an adjourned Quarterly Grand Communication held Monday, September 26, 1824, 
the committee made the following report: 


"The Committee appointed on the 6 Septr. to enquire whether Gen. La Fayette be an 
Antient York Mason presented the following Report and Resolution which as 
amended were severally adopted:— 


"The Committee appointed by the Grand Lodge to ascertain and Report whether 
General La Fayette be an Antient York Mason, and if so to report such measures it 
would be proper for the Grand Lodge to adopt in relation to this Brother, respectfully 
Report, 


"That they have been led to believe that this distinguished man, for whose attachment 
and services to this Country our fellow Citizens have evinced the warmest feelings of 
affection and gratitude has long been an Antient York Master Mason and has honored 
the institution by his patronage and added to its usefulness and respectability by a 
devoted attention to its interests. When all classes are zealous to display their good 
feelings upon his arrival amongst us, it would seem to your Committee that in a City 
where the Masonic institutions deservedly stand high, some testimony of respect is 
due from them to so worthy a brother. 


"They have been anxious to avoid unnecessary ostentation and expense, but at the 
same time to treat this guest as becomes the Institution, and his character. 



"The Committee recommended for adoption the following Resolutions:- "Resolved, 
that a Committee of seven be appointed whose duty it shall be as soon as they have 
received Masonic information that Gen. La Fayette is an Antient York Master Mason, 
to invite him to partake with his Masonic Brethren of a Dinner to be prepared for the 
occasion. 


"Resolved, that the same Committee shall be authorized to procure the Dinner, receive 
Subscriptions and make all necessary arrangements for the same at the price of five 
dollars for each subscriber. 


"Resolved, that the use of the Grand Salon shall be appropriated on the evening on 
which the Dinner is to take place to the subscribers to the same. 


"Resolved, that the Grand Lodge Room shall also be appropriated to the use of the 
subscribers on that day, with the consent of the Lodge whose day of meeting it may be 
and that an address suitable to the occasion be delivered. 


"James Haiper, 

Thos. Kittera, 

S. Badger, 

B. Newcomb, 

J. K. Kane, Committee." 
J. Randall, 


The R.W.D.G.M. was pleased to appoint Brothers J. Randall, J. S. Lewis, J. M. Pettit, 
D. E. Wilson, Robt. Toland, D. F. Gordon and Jas. McAlpin on said committee. 



On motion made and seconded, 


"Resolved, that the Grand Secretary transmit a copy of the Report and Resolutions to 
the R. W. Grand Master (Bro. John B. Gibson being absent from the City on official 
Duties as Judge of the Supreme Court), and respectfully invite his attendance in the 
City on the day when the Dinner to Gen. La Fayette shall take place." 


Saturday, October 2, 1 824, Brother Lafayette visited the navy yard, then on the 
Delaware River at the foot of Federal Street, attended by the governor and citizens of 
the first distinction, escorted by the United States Marines, a regiment of militia, 
several independent companies, and a long civic procession. 


After leaving the Philadelphia navy yard in the afternoon, Brother Lafayette was 
escorted by a committee of the Grand Lodge from his Lodgings at the house of Mrs. 
Nicholas Biddle, to the Masonic Hall on Chestnut Street, north side between Seventh 
and Eighth Streets, where he attended an Extra Grand Communication of the Grand 
Lodge of Pennsylvania, as stated in the minutes, viz.: 


"Philadelphia, Saturday, 2 Oct., A. D. 1824, A. L. 5824. 


"Extra Grand Communication. 


"This being the day appointed for a Dinner to our Distinguished Brother General La 
Fayette, in pursuance of a Resolution of the Grand Lodge adopted on the 20 
September ulto., about three hundred of the Craft, including a large proportion of the 
resident members of the Grand Lodge, assembled in the Hall at an early hour in the 
afternoon. 



"The R. W. Deputy Grand Master and Grand Officers and members, being seated in 
the Grand Lodge Room, the door was tyled, the Grand Lodge opened in form at four 
o'clock P. M. 

"Present:— 

"Bro. James Harper, R. W. Deputy G. M., in the Chair. 

"Bro. Thomas Kittera, R. W. Senior G. Warden. 

"Bro. Sami. Badger, R. W. Junior Warden. 

"Bro. John K. Kane, Acting Grand Secretary. 

"Bro. Joseph S. Lewis, Grand Treasurer. 

"Sami. A. Thomas, Depy. Acting Grand Secy. 

"Bro. Randall Hutchinson, Senior Grand Deacon. 

"Bro. George C. Potts, Grand Chaplain. 

"Bro. Jas. McAlpin, Grand Sword Bearer. 

"Bro. William Wray, Grand Steward. 

"Bro. S. F. Bradford, R. W. Past Grand Master. 

"Bro. Walter Kerr, R. W. Past Grand Master. 

"Bro. Bayse Newcomb, R. W. Past Grand Master. 

"Bro. Josiah Randall, R. W. Past Grand Master." 

Representatives and Past Masters from nearly all of the Lodges in the City and County 
of Philadelphia, and a large number of visiting brethren among whom were the 
following: by special invitation— Brothers George Washington La Fayette; M. La 
Vasseur and Colonel Victor Dupont, of Delaware, former aid to Brother La Fayette. 



Bro. Jones, P. G. M., Grand Lodge of Georgia. 

" E. Hicks, R. W. Grand Secy. Gd. Lodge N. York. 

" Geo. B. Porter, Lodge No. 43. 

" M. C. Rogers, " " " 

" Charles Stewart, Bro. Wm. Gamble, 

" I. M. Gamble, " T. delaPomerage. 

On motion made and seconded, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: 


"The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania glorying in the honour thus conferred on her by 
the visit of Brother Gilbert Motier de la Payette, and anxious to enrol among her 
members an individual so much distinguished by all the Virtues which ennoble the 
Masonic Character, has Resolved, that all the rights, dignities and privileges of a 
member of this Grand Lodge be, and the same are hereby conferred on Bro. Gilbert 
Motier de la Payette." 


A committee was appointed to wait upon La Payette at his lodgings and conduct him 
to the Hall. Here he was met at the door by the Grand Marshal and Grand Sword 
Bearer and received into the Grand Lodge with the highest honours. 


The R. W. Depy. Grand Master then rose and addressed Bro. La Payette as follows: 


"Bro. La Payette. 



"The Freemasons of Pennsylvania welcome you to their home with sincere and 
universal pleasure. 


"Warmly participating in the sentiments which have every where spontaneously burst 
from our fellow citizens in the lively gratitude for the services you have rendered our 
Country, in admiration of your high and various virtues, and in cordially reciprocating 
the attachment you have uniformly evinced for our liberties and for our happiness, we 
owe in addition the pride and sympathy of Masonic Brotherhood. Your meritorious 
life has, indeed, justly illustrated our principles; and those who now surround you, feel 
that like Washington, and Warren and Franklin, you have won their most affectionate 
veneration, by shedding honour on their beloved fraternity. Always contending 
General, in the great cause of human rights, your success has equalled the 
disinterestedness and perseverance of your devotion. In America, as the companion 
and friend of the wisest and best of mankind, you will ever be regarded as one of the 
founders of the greatest, purest and happiest of republics; while, in your native land it 
cannot he forgotten, that amidst the storms of political revolution, and through every 
vicissitude of personal fortune, you have stood an inflexible example of consistency, 
moderation and firmness. These impressions common to the people of the United 
States, but most dear to us, are now indelibly inscribed upon the records of history and 
will pass to our latest posterity with the sanction of national unanimity. Receive then 
most valued Brother, the most heartfelt benedictions of our sacred institution; receive 
the homage of free and upright men, who love you as an early benefactor and whose 
affection must remain as secure as your own virtues and as permanent as your own 
glory. 


"I have also the honour of presenting you with a Resolution passed unanimously by 
the Grand Lodge during its present session constituting you one of its members: I 
hope you will accept this as an additional evidence of the high sense they entertain of 
your virtues and of the services you have rendered to mankind in general and to 
Masonry in particular." 


To which Bro. La Fayette made the following reply: 


"Right Worshipful Grand Master and Brethren:— 



"I have often thought that we owe as much to our enemies as to our friends, and if this 
observation is true, it is most true, when applied to us as Masons. It is to the enmity 
and the persecutions of a Francis the 2d and Ferdinand the 7th that the Masons of 
Europe in Modern times have been indebted for opportunities of proving through 
much suffering and peril, that our principles are pure, and that their devotion to them 
is unchangeable. The Lodges of Spain in particular have been the victims of Royal 
fears but though dispersed, their members still are Masons, and though much 
oppressed, their light has not been extinguished. 


"You R. W. Sir, and Brethren, reposing under the cover of your own peaceful 
institutions, hear of these things only by the report of those who come to admire your 
prosperity and to share by your hospitality, the fruit of your labours. 


"I thank you for the honour you have just conferred on me, and assure you that I shall 
never forget this mark of your kind distinction, by which I am made the member of a 
body of which Franklin was the father and Washington the associate." 


The Brethren were now severally presented to Bro. La Fayette, when Grand Lodge 
closed in harmony at half past five o'clock. 


MASONIC DINNER 


A sumptuous banquet prepared by Bro. Daniel Rubicam being ready in the grand 
salon and adjoining banqueting room, the brethren entered in tile follow;ng order: 


Sojourning Brethren, 
Grand Tyler, 



Grand Pursuivant, 


Grand Stewards, 

Grand Deacons, 

Grand Chaplain, 

"The following report was received from the Committee appointed on the claim of 
William Christie for fum;ture supplied to the Committee of arrangement 

Grand Secretary, Grand Treasurer, 

Grand Wardens, 

Invited Guests, 


Brother La Fayette, supported by the R. W. Acting G.M. and D.G.M.P.T. 


The decorations of the room were prepared under the direction of Bro. Haviland, to 
whose refined taste and superior skill the fraternity were under great obligation; the 
beautiful salon and banqueting room never appeared to so great an advantage. 


The brethren sat down at six o'clock in the afternoon; feelings of hilarity, mirth and 
Masonic hrotherhood prevailed at the festive board. After the removal of the cloth a 
number of excellent toasts were given, followed by appropliate music from the 
Marine Band attached to the navy yard, for whose services the fraternity were 
indebted to the politeness of Bro. I. M. Gamble, commanding the marine coips on this 
station. 


The company adjourned at a proper hour, much gratified with the events of the day. 



The session of the Grand Lodge was held in the Grand Lodge Room on the second 
floor; the dinner was given in the large room or salon on the east side of the lower 
floor; this room was not used for Masonic purposes, but was rented out for social 
functions and exhibition purposes. Considerable difficulty was experienced by the 
committee to get the use of this room for the banquet, as appears from the final report 
of the committee presented to the Grand Lodge at the Grand Quarterly 
Communication held Monday, March 5, 1827, viz.: 


for the dinner to Bro. Genl. La Fayette-in 1824, and on all similar demands. 


"On motion and seconded, the same was adopted. "To the Grand Lodge of Penna. 


"The Comme. to which was referred the accounts Or William Christie and others, 
against the Committee of arrangements appointed by the Grand Lodge on the occasion 
of General La Fayette's visit. 


"Report, 

"That it appears to the Committee that the following bills contracted by the 
Committee of arrangements remain unpaid, viz.:— 

"William Christie for Upholstery $151.88 
Clark, for Carpentry $155.34 
Myers and Jones, for Painting $40.00 
Russell, Oil $4.87 



Porterage and Advertising $2.85 


Total $354 91 


That there remains in the hands of said Committee an unexpended balance of $88.86 


Leaving a deficit of monies to amot of $266.09 


which deficit this committee is of opinion is justly and equitably chargeable upon the 
Grand Lodge." 


To elucidate the opinion of the committee, it is proper to recur to some of the 
circumstances which preceded, as well as those which attended the reception of Genl. 
La Fayette. As soon as it was understood that this illustlious Mason intended to visit 
the Grand Lodge a committee was directed to devise measules worthy of the occasion 
and among the resolutions reported by them was one for the arrangement of a festival 
of welcome. It was proposed that the task of carrying this part of the arrangement into 
effect should be confided to a special committee and that the members of the 
fraternity should be generally invited; they further proposed that the price of tickets 
should be fixed at seven dollars. The Grand Lodge approved of the plan which its 
committee submitted, but probably not aware of the increased expenses attendannt on 
all entertainments which were given at that season of general festivity, it reduced the 
price of tickets to the sum of five dollars, and in part compensation for this reduction, 
it determined that the grand salon should he appropriated to the puiposes of the 
festival. 


It was not until the special committee, which was afterwards appointed, had made the 
more expensive part of their arrangements, that it was discovered that the Grand 
Lodge had no right to the salon without the consent of the tenant in possession. To 
obtain that consent it was necessary to pay fifty dollars to dislodge an Italian artist 



from the banqueting room, and a further sum of $67.75 to procure another room for a 
concert which had been announced for the evening at the salon. The sum of $ 1 1 7.75 
was thus required to procure accommodations which the Grand Lodge had stipulated 
it would furnish gratuitously. The obligation of the Grand Lodge to reimburse this 
sum, if necessary, has not been at any time questioned and needs no remarks. 


The great number of the brethren who came forward as subscribers, gratifying as the 
fact was to the committee, had the effect of increasing disproportionately the expenses 
of the banquet. The furniture and decorations belonging to the Grand Lodge were 
found altogether insufficient for the suite of apartments which it became necessary to 
open. New furniture and additional decorations were purchased by the committee and 
these have since been sold by the Grand Lodge and the proceeds carried into its 
treasury, or they still remain in its possession. 


The committee of arrangements, while mindful that it was their duty to welcome their 
patriarchal guest in a style which might become the Lodge of which "Franklin was the 
founder and Washington a member," yet anxiously avoided every application of the 
sinking fund to purposes not strictly within its specified objects. 


All their proceedings were characterized by as much economy as was consistent with 
the occasion. All the expenses of making preliminary arrangements were borne by 
themselves individually and when the moneys which they had received were found to 
be inadequate, they at once, with the aid of a few friends, applied a considerable sum 
of their own to meet the deficiency. 


The state of their accounts, strictly audited, stands thus: 


"They receive from subscribers in all $1,358. 

and appropriated from the private funds exclusive of the amt. 

expended in preliminary arrangements $80. 



Total $1,438.60 

They paid bill amounting to $1,349.65 


They yet owe $354.94 $1,704.59 


Balance due from committee $266.09 


"On a full view of the circumstances which have occasioned this balance against the 
committee of arrangements, first, that no discretion was permitted them in fixing the 
terms of subscription, the grand Lodge itself having defined the price on views of the 
subject which the result has proved to be incorrect; second, that a large portion of the 
balance was applied to procure rooms, which the Grand Lodge had, from an erroneous 
idea of its rights, declared should be given without cost; third, that the Grand Lodge 
has received a full equivalent for the residue in the property which it has sold or still 
retains, and fourth, that the doings of the committee were wisely and satisfactorily 
ordered and that the deficiency has been entirely occasioned by causes over which 
they had no possible control, the committee to which the accounts were referred have 
agreed to present the following resolution. 


"Resolved, that the R. W. G. M. be requested to draw his order on the grand treasurer 
for the sum of $266.09 in favour of Br. James McAlpin, treasurer of the La Fayette 
Comme. of arrangements. 


"All of which is respectfully submitted. 


"Philad., 5th, March, 1827." "(signed.) 
"Sami. F. Bradford, 



John K. Kane, 
Sami. Badger, 
Sami. H. Thomas." 


Among other relics of Brother Lafayette, we have in our Archives the "Golden Book 
of The Supreme Council for the Western Hemisphere." This contains a copy of the 
patent conferring the 33d degree upon Brother Lafayette by this Supreme Council; it 
also contains the following note written and signed by Brother Lafayette, May 10, 
1834, just ten days before his death, 


"It is the extreme indulgence of the Supreme Council of the United States, that 
elevated to the 33d degree in spite of the superiority in knowledge and in services of 
many of my brothers, I owe to-day the favors, of which I am not worthy, with which 
the great Council of the Occidental Hemisphere has deigned to overwhelm me, I 
accept them with a deep gratitude and will seek to merit them by my zeal. "May our 
ancient institution propagate everywhere the Liberty, the Equality, the Philanthrophy, 
and contribute to the great movement of social civilization which ought to emancipate 
the two Hemispheres. 


" (signed) Lafayette." 


Brother Lafayette died in Paris May 20, 1834. At an Extra Grand Communication of 
the Grand Lodge held Tuesday, June 24, 1834, his decease was announced to the 
Grand Lodge whereupon: 


"On Motion made and seconded, The following Preamble and Resolutions were 
unanimously adopted: 



"Whereas, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania have learned with the deepest emotions 
of sorrow, the decease of their illustrious Brother and Member, General Lafayette, 'an 
individual so much distinguished by all the virtues which ennoble the Masonic 
character,' and 


Whereas the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania feel it a mournful duty to pay the last 
tribute of their respect to the memory of a Brother, the last Major General of the 
Revolutionary Army, the disciple of Washington, the companion of Franklin, and the 
steadfast friend of civil and religious liberty. 


"Therefore Resolved, That the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania deeply deplore the loss 
of their revered and beloved Brother and Member, General Lafayette, whose labours 
in the cause of American Independence and of rational liberty and ardent devotion to 
the Fraternity, have endeared his memory to every Member of this venerable order. 


"Resolved, That the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania sympathize most sincerely with the 
amiable family of their deceased Brother, in the irreparable bereavement they have 
sustained, in the death of their excellent father. 


"Resolved, That as an humble testimonial of our respect for the memory of our 
deceased Brother, the Jewels, Hangings, and other Furniture of the Grand Lodge of 
Pennsylvania, be placed in mourning for the space of twelve months. 


"Resolved, That a correct Portrait of our deceased brother be procured, and placed in a 
conspicuous part of the Grand Lodge Room. 


"Resolved, That Brothers George M. Dallas, Thomas Kittera, Robert Toland, 
Cornelius Stevenson, and John M. Read, be a Committee to communicate the 
foregoing Resolutions to the family of Brother General Lafayette. 



"Resolved, That the foregoing Preamble and Resolutions be published in the public 
journals of the day." The Grand Lodge having closed, the Fraternity proceeded to the 
salon where they were gratified by hearing a very beautiful and instructive Masonic 
address from Bro. George M. Dallas, R. W. Dep. Grand Master. 


The Grand Lodge was again opened, when upon motion made and seconded it was 
unanimously resolved: 


"That the thanks of this Grand Lodge be presented to Bro. Dallas for his truly 
Masonic and admirable address delivered this day and that he be requested to furnish 
a copy of it for publication." 


The following is an extract from the very eloquent address delivered before the 
Fraternity, on this day, by Brother Geol ge M. Dallas, R. W. Deputy Grand Master. 


"1 would close here, did I not feel that the commemorative purpose of the day may for 
a moment, be with propriety interrupted by a reference to the recent departure of our 
illustrious friend and brother, Gilbert Motier De Lafayette. This truly good and 
eminently great man died suddenly, at the Capital of his European Country, and in the 
bosom of his family, on the morning of the 20th of May last, and in the 
seventyseventh year of his age. 


"It will be recollected by some whom I address, that on the 2d of October, 1 824, 
General Lafayette, then the Guest of a Nation to whose service he had dedicated his 
early enthusiasm, fortune and blood, was, in that chamber, invested with all the rights, 
dignities and privileges of a member of this Grand Lodge 'a body,' to use his own 
emphatic words, 'of which Franklin was the father and Washington the associate.' 



"Both hemispheres were alike the theatre of the virtues and exploits of this exalted 
Mason. In both he passed, unscathed in honour, through the ordeal of sanguinary 
revolution, in both he shone the firm, faithful and fearless champion of human 
liberties and rights, in both he riveted himself, by the loftiest and the gentlest qualities, 
in universal respect and affection, and in both his death is now sincerely mourned as a 
common calamity. In the memory, as in the life of their joint citizen and soldier, 
America and France have a lasting bond of sympathy and union. In this respect, as the 
moral link to connect two distant and powerful nations in mutual good will, his 
position on the records of immortality is without parallel. 


"While we join in the sad and solemn rites every where performing by our 
countrymen, in melancholy attestation of their deep veneration and undying gratitude 
for an early and indefatigable public benefactor, we cannot but own one added pang, 
though accompanied by one peculiar pride as kindling memory suggests that he also 
was a Mason." 


On July 21, 1834, commemorative exercises were held at Zion Lutheran Church, 
southeast comer of Fourth and Cherry Streets, in which the Grand Lodge participated. 


Other mementos of Brother Lafayette in the Museum of the Grand Lodge of 
Pennsylvania, beside the Washington Apron, are the two relics of Brother Lafayette's 
visit to Philadelphia in 1824. 


1 . A piece of candle and holder used to illuminate one of the window panes of 
Independence Hall during the procession, September 28,-1824. 


2. A memorial cotton handkerchief upon which is printed his portrait, scene of his 
arrival at New York on the ship Cadmus, and the memorial arcll erected in front of 
Independence Hall, through which General Lafayette and the procession passed at his 
reception, September 28, 1824. 



3. A largefull length oil portrait of Brother General Lafayette in the upper corridor. 


4. A study in oil said to be from life in the library. 


5. Copy of Houdan's marble bust of Brother General Lafayette in the Library. 


6. Two silk badges worn at the funeral procession and commemorative service of Zion 
Lutheran Church July 21, 1838. 


7. Two engraved French portraits in Washington alcove in museum. 


8. A number of Lafayette medals in the museum collection. 


9. A Lafayette Silver Dollar coined by the United States in the year 1900. 10. Four 
Masonic Lodges in Pennsylvania are named after this distinguished brother, viz.: 

No. 71, Philadelphia, 

No. 194, Selinsgrove, 

No. 199, Lock Haven, 

No. 652, Carnegie. 


In conclusion to illustrate how the memory of Brother Lafavette is honored in both 
Masonic and civil life in the United States, as a matter of fact, there are no less than 



thirty Masonic Lodges named after Brother Lafayette in twenty-six states in the 
Union. 


In the United States, there are fourteen villages, eleven towns, five counties, one 
parish and one city which bear the name of our honored brother, the Marquis General 
Lafayette. 


As above stated, it was resolved at the Extra Grand Communication held June 24, 
1834, that a correct portrait of Brother Lafayette should be procured and placed in a 
conspicuous part of the Lodge room. 


It appears that after this resolution was adopted, the sum of eighty dollars ($80) was 
collected towards obtaining this portrait. 


At the Annual Grand Communication held Monday, December 28, 1835, when 
Washington Hall in South Third Street above Spruce Street was dedicated and 
consecrated to Masonic uses, on motion of Brother F. Cooper and seconded, it was 
resolved that a committee of five be appointed to receive the amount collected June 
24, 1834, with further authority to solicit donations from Lodges and members within 
this Masonic jurisdiction, and as soon as a sufficient sum shall have been collected, to 
have a likeness of Lafayette painted by an eminent artist, and to have the same put up 
in a conspicuous place in the Grand Lodge Room. 


The R. W. Grand Master was pleased to appoint on said committee Bros. F. Cooper, 
Geo. Fox, W. Mayweg, S. Wonderly and A. Quniton. Nothing appeared to have been 
done in this matter until four months later, when the following amendment was 
offered at an adjourned Extra Grand Fodge held April 18, 1836. 



"On motion of Bro. Geo. Fox and seconded, the Resolution adopted on the 28th 
December last, relative to a Painting of Bro. Lafayette was reconsidered and the 
following offered as an Amendment thereof and adopted, viz.:— 


"Resolved, that the Committee appointed on the 28th Deer. 1835, be authorized to 
solicit donations from Lodges and members within the jurisdiction and when a 
sufficient sum shall have been Collected to procure a full length painting of Benjamin 
Franklin, and a portrait of Lafayette, and have said paintings placed in a conspicuous 
situation in the Grand Lodge Room." 


After this the matter slumbered for six years, wllen it was revived at the Quarterly 
Grand Communication held Monday, March 7, 1842, by the following minute: 


"On motion duly made and seconded, the Grand Secretary was directed to endeavour 
to procure information respecting collections made for Likeness of Benjm. Franklin 
and Lafayette and report at next quarterly Communication." 


No action was taken in reference to the portrait for the next six years, when the matter 
was again brought to the notice of the Grand Lodge at the Grand Quarterly 
Communication held Monday, March 6, 1848, by a communication on the subject 
from Phoenix Lodge, No. 130, viz.: 


"The following was received and referred to Past Grand Masters Bros. Newcomb, 
Barger and Page. 


Phil., Feby. 21, 1848. To Wm. H. Adams, 


Rt.W.G.Secy. of G.L. of Pa. Dr. Sir & Bro. 



"The following Resolution was on motion & seconded unanimously Adopted at a 
meeting of Phoenix Lodge No. 130, held at Masonic Hall South 3rd St., Wednesday 
evening, February 16th, A. L. 5848. 


"Resolved, That the representatives of this Lodge be directed to call the attention of 
the Grand Lodge to the fact that there has been for a number of Years in the hands of 
Past Grand Master Bro. Jno. M. Read, a sum of money, raised by Subscription for the 
purpose of procuring a portrait of Bros. Franklin & Lafayette, that the said Portrait has 
never been pure llased and request the Grand Lodge to appoint a Committee to 
examine into the matter and ask P. G. Mastel Jno. M. Read to account for the same. 


"Extract from the Minutes. "Signed. Wm. S. Schultz, "Secy. Lodge No. 130." 


This was referred to Past Grand Masters Bro. Newcomb, Barger and Page, wllo at the 
Quarterly Communication September 4, 1848, made the following report, which was 
received and the resolution adopted, viz.: 


"To the R.W. Grand Lodge of Penna. 


"The Committee appointed in relation to the money subscribed and paid for the 
purpose of procuring a portrait of Lafayette and Franklin. 


"Respectfully report, That a Sum of money for that purpose subscribed was paid into 
the hands of Bro. John M. Read who cannot at present find the subscription paper 
containing the precise amount, but believes it to be about Eighty Dollars which Sum 
he is ready to pay over as the Grand Lodge may direct and when the amt. can be 
ascertained to correct the same. 



"Your Committee respectfully offer the following Resolution. Resolved, that the 
Grand Treasurer call upon Bro. Read & receive from him the above mentioned Sum 
of Eighty Dollars. 


"Phil., Sept. 4, 1848. 
"Signed. B. Newcomb, 
Wm. Barger, 

Jas. Page, Committee." 


At the Grand Quarterly Communication held March 5, 1849, the 
following was offered by Brother John Thomson, R. W. G. Treasurer, 
and adopted, viz.: 


"Whereas, there is in the hands of the Grand Treasurer the sum of Eighty dollars 
contributed some years since by certain members of the Grand Lodge for the puipose 
of a likeness of Bro. La Fayette and as said sum is insufficient to accomplish the 
object intended therefore Resolved, That the Grand Treasurer be instructed to add 
from the funds of the Grand Lodge $20 to the $80 contributed and with the sum 
purchase one share Masonic loan for the puipose of furthering the object intended." 


It appears that the portrait of Lafayette which was formerly in the Grand Lodge room 
and now in the second story corridor of the New Temple was not procured until after 
the New Chestnut Street Hall was dedicated in 1855. 


No record has been found as to who the artist was or what was the amount paid for 


same. 





THE NEW PATRIOTISM 


Fly the flag at half-mast 
For the life that has been split, 
For the wealth that has been built 
On the bones of men; 

Fly the flag at half-mast 
Till the day breaks again. 

Fly the flag at half-mast 
For the greed that would not die, 
For the hate that scorched the sky 
With envenenomed fire; 

Fly the flag at half-mast 
For the deeds of men’s ire. 

Fly the flag at half-mast 
For the love that has been slain, 
For the conflict’s bloody stain 
On the hopes of men; 



Fly the flag at half-mast 
Till the day breaks again. 


- T.C. Clark 


— o- 


Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstitution - Adam 
Smith. 




GEORGE FRANKLIN FORT, MASONIC HISTORIAN 


BY JOHN HENRY FORT, NEW JERSEY 


The following biographical sketch of Brother George Franklin Fort, author of "The 
Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry," written at our request by his brother, 
Mr. John Henry Fort of New Jersey, is intended as an introduction to an article to 
appear in the next issue of THE BUILDER, The Masonic Writings of George Franklin 
Fort, by Brother Oliver D. Street of Alabama. 


GEORGE FRANKLIN FORT was bom at Absecon, Atlantic County, New Jersey, on 
November 20th, 1843. His father was Rev. John Fort, a member of the New Jersey 
Methodist Episcopal Conference, who entered the ministry in the old days of the 
itinerancy and whose father was one of the founders of the faith in New Jersey. 



George Flanklin Fort was named after his uncle, Dr. George Franklin Fort, who was 
Governor of New Jersey from 1851 to 1855. In later years the State historian 
accredited the uncle with the authorship of the work by confusing the names. George 
F. Fort was descended from an old Norman French-Anglo-Saxon ancestry. The 
original Fort, or "Le Fort," was the Captain of the Body Guard of William the 
Conqueror at Hastings in 1066 and his descendents remained in England till 1695, 
when Roger Fort settled at Hampton-Hanover, afterwards New Mills and now 
Pemberton, Burlington County, New Jersey, upon a plantation which has remained in 
the family for generations. His family settled in New Jersey when the population was 
probably not over five thousand, as against nearly two million now. The period was an 
epochal one in the State and the Fort family were distinctly active in the development 
of the State. His great-great grandfather on his mother's side, William Emley, was a 
surveyor to the Crown and acted as Colonial Governor of New Jersey and helped to 
survey the lines dividing East and West Jersey. He was quite a linguist and of Scotch- 
English descent, coming from Yorkshire. 


George F. Fort's family were not only very prominent in New Jersey, in having 
contributed two governors to the State, both born in the old homestead at Pemberton, 
but also were honored by having two Assemblymen and one State Senator in the 
Legislature, and one Judge of the Supreme Court, and two of the Court of Errors and 
Appeals. The family had several ministers and physicians, all prominent, and in the 
Revolutionary days contributed ten members to the Continental Army, both the Line 
and Militia. With an ancestry dating back to the Vikings and in which several 
languages had been spoken, it is not surprising that George F. Fort easily acquired a 
knowledge of and mastered seventeen languages and dialects. He read Latin, French, 
Spanish and Italian with as much ease as English, and amused himself with reading 
the works of noted writers in these languages. He read and spoke German as fluently 
as English and his several trips to Europe widened his knowledge and perfection. He 
attended lectures at Heidleburg University and studied Anglo-Saxon and several 
dialects for historical purposes. The acquiring of a language with him was a sort of 
heredity and if no glossary was available he would dig out certain roots from 
dictionaries and in a short time would construct a grammar and glossary and soon be 
reading the language as readily as English. It was a gift. 


Mr. Fort studied law with Abraham Browning of Camden, then the leading attorney of 
the State and at one time Attorney General, when family prestige and ability made the 
appointment instead of political influence as in modem times. While he was 
successful in his practice his tastes were of a literary character and he regularly 



pursued a literary course. There is no question but that he was one of the most learned 
men of the century and his knowledge was not confined to archaic research and 
antiquities, but was universal. Science, belles-letters, literature, mathematics, 
astronomy and ancient history, all alike claimed his attention. He was a modest and 
retiring man and any attempt to draw him out or into a discussion was fruitless, but if 
something happened whereby he expressed an opinion, his erudition was apparent at 
once and in a few moments extemporaneously a magnificent oration was delivered 
upon any subject he spoke upon. It was like a prophet speaking and when finished 
evidenced the depth of learning and greatness of thought. 


In early life he became prominent in Masonic circles and with several friends and an 
older brother established Trimble Lodge No. 1 17, A. F. & A. M., at Camden, New 
Jersey, his residence. The new lodge aimed at a higher personality than the other 
lodges and did not meet with immediate success. Mr. Fort in order to infuse life into 
the lodge of which he was first Senior Warden and had then become Worshipful 
Master, inaugurated a series of lectures and while others spoke, his great knowledge 
upon the antiquities of Freemasonry attracted so much attention and comment that he 
was urged to pursue his researches and write a work upon the subject, which he 
afterwards did, first visiting the Libraries of Europe and many of the old Cathedrals, 
the British Museum, Library at the Vatican and the Bodlein at Oxford. This work was 
named the Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry. It was immediately 
recognized by the literally world as the authority, and the Encyclopedia Britannica in 
all succeeding editions recognized it as authoritive and quoted it on the subject of 
Freemasonry. Immediately the literary men of the world began to write him for 
opinions upon other Masonic subjects and this caused him to write "A Historical 
Treatise on Early Builders' Marks," and a monograph entitled "Medieval Builders." 
Later he wrote the Medical Economy of the Middle Ages. The latter was written after, 
as associate editor of his brother's newspaper, he criticised the statement of a 
prominent physician at the 100th Anniversary of the New Jersey Medical Society 
"that medicine had no history beyond Galen and Hippocrates," and a committee from 
the Association requested him to write a history of the ancient cult. 


Mr. Fort was a regular contributor to the several newspapers owned by his youngest 
brother, John H. Fort, upon Masonic subjects. Some of them were fugitive and others 
in series. They were copied in the Masonic Journals of France, England, Australia, 
and the leading magazines, and often created a learned controversy, but his knowledge 
of languages always enabled him to give authoritive data. Some of the critics thought 
he should literally translate his authorities, as but few could read the original. This he 



always refrained from doing as he claimed the quotation was the authority. Among his 
correspondents were such men as Hughan, Gould, Woodford and other Masonic 
writers and antiquarians. His books were reviewed by all the great newspapers of the 
world such as the New York Herald, Sun, Times, World, the London Times, Globe, 
Blackwoods Magazine and Masonic Journals, the Chaine d'Union of Paris, the 
Melbourne Australian, all the Philadelphia papers, especially the Ledger, Press, 
Record, Bulletin, Telegraph and the Keystone. Gould, the Masonic writer, said of him 
"Fort has succeeded where all others failed in making the study of our antiquities an 
interesting task." Other writers said "his history of Freemasonry is as interesting as a 
Romance of the Middle Ages." The Golden Age of New York characterizes it as "a 
work of which members of the craft may well be proud." The Encyclopedia 
Britannica says of it, "the book is instructive as throwing light on certain phases of 
Middle Age life." In fact the newspaper criticisms are all highly eulogistic and place 
the History as the highest contribution to Masonic literature. All his other works were 
just as favorably received by the press of the world. The criticisms are in many 
languages and would fill a volume in themselves. In a scrap book of Mr. Fort's are not 
only the notices of the press but letters in many languages from the literatti of the 
world and most of his fugitive articles which are well worth publishing collectively in 
book form. All his other works were equally as well received. Mr. Fort has been 
compared to such writers as Hallam, Draper, Lecky, Macauley, and other archaic, 
historic and antiquarian writers, and all refer to his writings as showing vast erudition 
and research. 


George F. Fort was primarily educated in the Public Schools of New Jersey in the 
various towns his father was stationed at as a pastor, and afterwards graduated from 
Pennington Seminary, a Methodist Institution of learning, under the direction of the 
New Jersey Annual Conference. His after studies of the various languages and 
literature were by his own effort and attendance of lectures abroad and by visits to 
European Institutions of Learning. Mr. Fort has given to America the credit of being 
the standard writer upon Masonic and Medical histories. 


Mr. Fort was a member of Trimble Lodge No. 1 17, A. F. & A. M., of which he was 
practically the founder. He was the first Senior Warden and Second Worshipful 
Master. He lived to see the lodge become the largest in membership in New Jersey. 
He was a Knight Templar, belonging to Cyrene Commandery Vale (No. 7) of 
Camden, Vanhook Council No. 8, Royal and Select Masters, Siloam Chapter Royal 
Arch Masons, Excelsior Consistory 32nd Degree, and all the intermediate Ancient 



Accepted Scottish Rite degrees. It has been stated that he was also a 33rd Degree 
Mason, it having been conferred upon him in Europe. 


In December, 1877, York Lodge of England in recognition of his great services to 
Freemasonry, conferred upon him Honorary Life Membership and sent him a 
specially engraved certificate bearing a picture of the crypt in York Minster where the 
lodge anciently met. The original certificate from York Lodge is now in possession of 
Trimble Lodge No. 1 17 of Camden. 


Mr. Fort spent a long time in Europe on different trips and was well acquainted there 
in Masonic circles. He was made the Grand Representative of the Grand Lodge of 
England to the Grand Lodge of New Jersey by the then Prince of Wales, Grand 
Master of Masons of England, who afterwards became the King of England as 
Edward VII. 


George F. Fort died at the home of his nephew while on a visit at Atlantic City, a few 
miles from where he was bom, on March 30th, 1909. Mr. Fort was practically a 
recluse the latter years of his life. His health was poor and his literary tastes naturally 
caused him to avoid society. For years he was editor of the Keystone, a Masonic 
Journal published in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the America Notes and Queries 
and several newspapers published by his brother John H. Fort. Some time before his 
death he told a friend he had finished a History of Norse Mythology and claimed he 
had in the destruction of the God Baldur by the other Mythological Norse Gods 
discovered the origin of the story of Hiram Abif. He stated the work was ready for the 
printer but he was holding it back as he had been unable to secure a font of Norse type 
and was afraid he would have to have it cast to give the data exact. Since his death no 
trace has so far been found of the manuscript. In all probability this valuable history 
may be lost and the researches of a master mind for nearly a half century gone to 
waste. His scrap book would be a most interesting publication if edited by someone 
skilled in Masonic lore. There are many articles of rare interest that never got beyond 
local readers. 


Mr. Fort's works are on the shelves of most all the prominent libraries of the world, 
such as the East India Library, British Museum, Congressional Library at Washington, 



and Institutions of learning everywhere, and thousands of private libraries. His own 
library was entirely filled with works in foreign languages and were upon historic, 
antiquarian and archaic subjects. He was at one time Judge Advocate of the Sixth 
Regiment National Guard of New Jersey with rank of Captain. 




FOR THE MONTHLY LODGE MEETING 


CORRESPONDENCE CIRCLE BULLETIN— No. 19 


DEVOTED TO ORGANIZED MASONIC STUDY 


Edited by Bro. Robert I. Clegg 


THE BULLETIN COURSE OF MASONIC STUDY FOR MONTHLY LODGE 
MEETINGS AND STUDY CLUBS 


FOUNDATION OF THE COURSE 


THE Course of Study has for its foundation two sources of Masonic information: 

THE BUILDER and Mackey's Encyclopedia. In another paragraph is explained how 
the references to former issues of THE BUILDER and to Mackey's Encyclopedia may 
be worked up as supplemental papers to exactly fit into each installment of the Course 
with the paper by Brother Clegg. 



MAIN OUTLINE 


The Course is divided into five principal divisions which are in turn subdivided, as is 
shown below: 


Division I. Ceremonial Masonry. A. The Work of a Lodge. B. The Lodge and the 
Candidate. C. first Steps. D. Second Steps. E. Third Steps. 


Division II. Symbolical Masonry. 


A. Clothing. B. Working Tools. C. furniture. D. Architecture. E. Geometry. F. 
Signs. G. Words. H. Grips. 


Division III. Philosophical Masonry. A. Foundations. B. Virtues. C. Ethics. D. 
Religious Aspect. E. The Quest. F. Mysticism. G. The Secret Doctrine. 


Division IV. Legislative Masonry. A. The Grand Lodge. 1. Ancient Constitutions. 2. 
Codes of Law. 3. Grand Lodge Practices. 4. Relationship to Constituent Lodges. 5. 
Official Duties and Prerogatives. B. The Constituent Lodge. 1. Organization. 2. 
Qualifications of Candidates. 3. Initiation, Passing and Raising. 4. Visitation. 5. 
Change of Membership. 


Division V. Historical Masonry. A. The Mysteries— Earliest Masonic Light. B. 
Studies of Rites— Masonry in the Making. C. Contributions to Lodge Characteristics. 
D. National Masonry. E. Parallel Peculiarities in Lodge Study. F. Feminine Masonry. 
G. Masonic Alphabets. H. Historical Manuscripts of the Craft. I. Biographical 
Masonry. J. Philological Masonry— Study of Significant Words. 



THE MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS 


Each month we are presenting a paper written by Brother Clegg, who is following the 
foregoing outline. We are now in "First Steps" of Ceremonial Masonry. There will be 
twelve monthly papers under this particular subdivision. On page two, preceding each 
installment, will be given a number of "Helpful Hints" and a list of questions to be 
used by the chairman of the Committee during the study period which will bring out 
every point touched upon in the paper. 


Whenever possible we shall reprint in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin articles 
from other sources which have a direct bearing upon the particular subject covered by 
Brother Clegg in his monthly paper. These articles should be used as supplemental 
papers in addition to those prepared by the members from the monthly list of 
references. Much valuable material that would otherwise possibly never come to the 
attention of many of our members will thus be presented. 


The monthly installments of the Course appearing in the Correspondence Circle 
Bulletin should be used one month later than their appearance. If this is done the 
Committee will have opportunity to arrange their programs several weeks in advance 
of the meetings and the Brethren who are members of the National Masonic Research 
Society will be better enabled to enter into the discussions after they have read over 
and studied the installment in THE BUILDER. 


REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTAL PAPERS 


Immediately preceding each of Brother Clegg's monthly papers in the Correspondence 
Circle Bulletin will be found a list of references to THE BUILDER and Mackey's 
Encyclopedia. These references are pertinent to the paper and will either enlarge upon 
many of the points touched upon or bring out new points for reading and discussion. 
They should be assigned by the Committee to different Brethren who may compile 
papers of their own from the material thus to be found, or in many instances the 
articles themselves or extracts therefrom may be read directly from the originals. The 



latter method may be followed when the members may not feel able to compile 
original papers, or when the original may be deemed appropriate without any 
alterations or additions. 


HOW TO ORGANIZE FOR AND CONDUCT THE STUDY MEETINGS 


The Lodge should select a "Research Committee" preferably of three "live" members. 
The study meetings should be held once a month, either at a special meeting of the 
Lodge called for the purpose, or at a regular meeting at which no business (except the 
Lodge routine) should be transacted-all possible time to be given to the study period. 


After the Lodge has been opened and all routine business disposed of, the Master 
should turn the Lodge over to the Chairman of the Research Committee. This 
Committee should be fully prepared in advance on the subject for the evening. All 
members to whom references for supplemental papers have been assigned should be 
prepared with their papers and should also have a comprehensive grasp of Brother 
Clegg's paper. 


PROGRAM FOR STUDY MEETINGS 


1. Reading of the first section of Brother Clegg's paper and the supplemental papers 
thereto. 


(Suggestion: While these papers are being read the members of the Lodge should 
make notes of any points they may wish to discuss or inquire into when the discussion 
is opened. Tabs or slips of paper similar to those used in elections should be 
distributed among the members for this puipose at the opening of the study period.) 


2. Discussion of the above. 



3. The subsequent sections of Brother Clegg's paper and the supplemental papers 
should then be taken up, one at a time, and disposed of in the same manner. 


4. Question Box. 


MAKE THE "QUESTION BOX" THE FEATURE OF YOUR MEETINGS 


Invite questions from any and all Brethren present. Let them understand that these 
meetings are for their particular benefit and get them into the habit of asking all the 
questions they may think of. Every one of the papers read will suggest questions as to 
facts and meanings which may not perhaps be actually covered at all in the paper. If at 
the time these questions are propounded no one can answer them, SEND THEM IN 
TO US. All the reference material we have will be gone through in an endeavor to 
supply a satisfactory answer. In fact we are prepared to make special research when 
called upon, and will usually be able to give answers within a day or two. Please 
remember, too, that the great Library of the Grand Lodge of Iowa is only a few miles 
away, and, by order of the Trustees of the Grand Lodge, the Grand Secretary places it 
at our disposal on any query raised by any member of the Society. 


FURTHER INFORMATION 


The foregoing information should enable local Committees to conduct their Lodge 
study meetings with success. However we shall welcome all inquiries and 
communications from interested Brethren concerning any phase of the plan that is not 
entirely clear to them, and the services of our Study Club Department are at the 
command of our members, Lodge and Study Club Committees at all times. 



QUESTIONS ON "THE OBLIGATION" I Define the word "obligation." Have oaths 
and obligations been in universal practice ? Why ? Can you name oaths administered 
outside the Fraternity with which the Masonic obligation may be compared? Are the 
marriage oath, the President's oath, etc., such forms ? Why is a religious sanction 
thrown about an oath ? Does the taking of an obligation imply that the candidate 
cannot be trusted? Does it make his obligation or does it define it? What does Tyler 
say about the universality of oaths ? How do Philo and Cicero define an oath ? Can 
you give a better definition of an obligation than any herewith offered? If so, will you 
send it in to the Society ? 


II What does Gould believe to have been the original of the Masonic oath ? Why was 
the oath taken by the freemen adopted into the forms of the Masonic lodge? Do we 
see today any institutions copying the forms of oaths employed by some other 
institution ? Name them. Were the earliest Masonic obligations short or long? How 
did the obligation evolve into such length? Is this legitimate? Have any other parts of 
the ceremonies evolved similarly? Are Masonic ceremonies still changing and 
growing? If so, why? If not, why not? What was the substance of the earliest 
obligations? Why were the building secrets so jealously guarded? How did these 
secrets come to be public property ? What effect did such publicity have upon the 
Freemasons? 


ITT What is the whole point of the present obligation? Have we any trade secrets ? If 
you believe that a simpler, more effective obligation might be written, will you offer 
one? Why should Masonic secrets be still so jealously guarded? What is the function 
of secrecy in Masonry? Does friendship have its secrets? Business? Diplomacy? What 
would happen to the Fraternity if it should abandon its policy of secrecy ? Does 
secrecy attract men to it? Why? 


IV What is the meaning of "due form"? Whence came the term ? What is the 
difference between form and formality ? When two friends meet do they shake hands 
in "due form"? Does the form in which the obligation is given add to its dignity and 
impressiveness ? Do you permit any flippancy in your own lodge's ceremony of 
initiation ? Why not ? 



V Why are the penalties kept so secret? How much can you talk about Masonry 
without violating your obligation to secrecy? Did the earliest obligations have any 
penalties attached ? If not why not? What is the "Harleian Manuscript" ? What is 
meant by "Old Charges"? Why did the Semites fear drowning so? What do Old 
Testament writers seem to feel concerning the sea ? When the sailors cast Jonah 
overboard did they suppose they were putting him out of reach of the God he had 
offended ? Would you as soon be buried in the sea as on the land? What is meant by 
"consecrated ground" ? What churches still bury their dead in consecrated ground? 
Why? Does the custom of setting apart a special tract of ground for burial add dignity 
to the thought of death? Would you as soon think yourself dead as lying in the sea as 
lying in a grave ? Who added the present penalties to our obligations? When? What 
hint do you get from Brother Clegg's suggestions? Why have anti-Masons so rabidly 
attacked the obligation? Is a man scared by penalties which he knows will never be 
inflicted? Who was John Quincy Adams ? Why did he fight the Fraternity? Do you 
agree with what Brother MacBride says about the obligation? If not, why not ? If you 
do, why ? Is there any way in which the obligation could be recast ? Who would have 
the authority to do so ? Would it be of any advantage to have a General Grand Lodge 
of America to take care of such matters ? 


VI Why is the cable tow removed when it is? What does it signify ? Is the obligation 
an appeal to a man's sense of honor ? Or is it a slam against his sense of honor? Does 
the wedding oath add to or detract from the stability and dignity of marriage? If 
marriages were left to private wills could the law have any control over them ? How 
could Masonic law be brought to bear upon a man who had never taken an 
obligation ? What is the real "Masonic Tie" ? Does that tie draw you to other 
Masons ? Does it ever restrain you from doing a wrong to a brother Mason ? Why ? 


SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES 


Mackey's Encyclopedia: Oath, p. 622; Oath, Corporal, p. 524; Oath of the Gild, p. 
624. Obligation, p. 525. THE BUILDER: Vol. I.— Oath, The Freeman's, p. 237. 
Obligations not political, p. 88. Vol. II.— Oaths, p. 272; Dec. C. C. B. 2; Cor. 190; Q. 
B. 94, 348 Obligations, Q. B. 348. Vol. III.— Oaths, p. 345; Jan. C. C. B. 2; Apr. C. C. 
B. 1; June C. C. B. 2- Penalty of Violation, p. 36. Obligations, p. 334; Dec. C. C. B. 4 
Vol. IV.— A Hint as to Penalties, p. 178; this issue. 



FIRST STEPS BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, IOWA 


PART VII— THE OBLIGATION I THE word "obligation” means, according to its 
derivation, a "binding to." It is more than an oath and more than a vow, for it 
combines both, and it has been used, in one form or another, ever since the earliest 
times. Cicero defined it as "an affirmation under the sanction of religion," while Philo 
called it "the most sure symbol of good faith." Some obligations have had penalties 
attached, others have not. Obligations have been in such universal practice that J.E. 
Tyler was justified in saying that "through all the diversified stages of society— from 
the lowest barbarism to the highest cultivation of civilized life— where the true religion 
has been professed, no less than where paganism has retained its hold, recourse has 
been had to oaths as affording the nearest approximation to certainty in evidence, and 
the surest pledge of the performance of a promise." This last phrase furnishes us with 
a good working definition of an obligation; it is the solemn pledge to perform a 
promise. 


II In old England, when Masonry was still purely operative, obligations were in use in 
all sections of society, but the most solemn of all was the obligation which a free man 
took to remain faithful to the king; that oath ran as follows: "You shall be true and 
faithful to our Sovereign Lord the King." Brother R. F. Gould is of the opinion that 
this oath was the original of the Masonic obligation because the earliest obligations 
found in the Old Charges are very similar to it. 


However that may be, we are certain that the first obligations were short and simple 
for this is proved from the written records. This does not mean that later forms have 
any less validity, because, as the Institution grew in numbers and power, new duties 
would arise, new conditions would have to be met, and the candidate would be 
required to obligate himself accordingly. If the Fraternity were now to be called upon 
to perform some new duty to the world it could lawfully require of each candidate a 
pledge to do his share therein. The Masonic obligation has evolved in the past; it may 
continue to evolve in the future. 



There has been much controversy among our authorities as to the substance of the 
earliest Masonic obligations; they have not yet arrived at unanimity but it is safe to 
say that a majority of them agree that they had to do chiefly with building secrets. At a 
time when architectural methods were the chief stock in trade of the Institution, when 
it made its living by the practice of them, and before handbooks of architecture were 
dreamed of, it seems reasonable to suppose that the candidate would have been chiefly 
called upon to keep these invaluable secrets to himself. 


ITT But when the Institution was transformed from a craft of Masons doing operative 
work into a Fraternity of Masons banded together for speculative work, it was 
necessary to change the substance of the obligation. Trade secrets had become public 
property; any man could find them in printed manuals. Moreover, building came to be 
done by men outside the Fraternity, and it was no longer a matter of life and death to 
preserve building secrets. Accordingly, the obligation has changed in substance. At 
the present time it has no other purpose than to bind the candidate to absolute secrecy 
as to what goes on inside the lodge and what is done during the ceremonies of 
initiation. Some Masonic leaders believe that if the obligations were recast so as to 
oblige the candidate to nothing except the vow of secrecy that the ceremony would 
gain in reality and impressiveness. On that every Mason is entitled to hold his own 
opinion. 


IV How much importance the Fraternity attaches to the obligation itself is shown by 
the elaborate precautions which are thrown about it and by the careful method 
whereby the candidate is put in position to take it. "Due form" simply means that he is 
in a posture which is a fitting form in which to make such a vow; the term itself is of 
comparatively recent American origin but the ceremony represented by it is probably 
as old as the Craft itself. One touch of flippancy or carelessness in giving or in taking 
the obligation would rob it of much of its impressiveness. 


V Veils must be thrown about the penalties of the obligation for there is nothing in all 
the ceremonies more secret than these; nevertheless it may be possible to say a word 
or two concerning them without violation of our own oath of secrecy. 



It is certain that the earliest obligations had no penalties attached to them at all, as is 
evidenced by the following specimen, which has been taken from the Harleian 
Manuscript No. 2054, dating from the seventeenth century: 


"There are several words and signs of a Freemason to be revealed to you which as you 
will answer before God at the great and terrible day of Judgment, you keep secret and 
not reveal the same to any in the hearing of any person but to the Masters and Fellows 
of the said society of Freemasons. So help me God." (Spelling modernized.) 


There is in possession of the Grand Lodge Library of Iowa a very old ritual in which 
the obligation has no penalties at all. 


Among many ancient peoples (more especially the Semites) it was believed that death 
in the sea was a fate too terrible to be contemplated because it was supposed that those 
lying on the floor of the sea would never rise on the Resurrection Day. The land 
belonged to God; the sea to some alien deity; it was feared that this alien deity would 
refuse to surrender up his dead. To perish in the sea was the most awful of fates. 


During medieval times it was universally believed that only those would be raised to a 
happy future life who had been buried in consecrated ground. The criminal burned at 
the stake, the felon drowned in the sea, the suicide buried at the cross-roads with a 
stake through his breast~it was feared that these would have no part in the 
Resurrection. 


When and by whom the present penalties were attached to the Masonic obligation 
remains a mystery, albeit many suggestions have been offered which throw some light 
on the matter. One of the most valuable of these hints is that offered by Brother 
Robert I. Clegg, who says: 



"Death by slow drowning was once by legal authority established as a proper 
punishment. . . Consider the following: In the curious ordinances of Henry VI for the 
proper conduct of the Court of Admiralty of the Humber, are enumerated various 
offenses of a maritime connection and their due punishment. To adhere closely to the 
character of the Court, and be within proper jurisdiction of the Admiralty, the 
punishments were generally inflicted at low water-mark." This court, he continues, 
being composed of "Masters, merchants and marines, with all others that do enjoy the 
King's stream with hook, net or any engine," was addressed, when assembled, as 
follows: 


"'You, Masters of the Quest, if you or any of you discover or disclose anything of the 
King's secret counsel or of the counsel of your fellows (for the present you are 
admitted to be the King's counsellors) you are to be, and shall be, had down to the low 
water-mark, where must be made three times, 'O Yes !' for the King, and then and 
there this punishment, by the law prescribed, shall be inflicted upon them; that is, their 
hands and feet bound, their throats cut, their tongues pulled out and their bodies 
thrown into the sea.' " 


The penalties, it need not be said, have ever been one of the chief points attacked by 
the enemies of the Fraternity. Thus, while leading the rabid attack on Freemasonry 
which disfigured the early half of the last century, John Quincy Adams said that "the 
whole case between Masonry and anti-Masonry, now on trial before the tribunal of 
public opinion, is consecrated in a single act," and that act, he goes on to explain, is 
the obligation, more especially its penalties. 


Masons have no need to feel ashamed of any part of their ceremonies, least of all the 
obligations; yet it may be said, within certain reserves, that if the present penalties, 
with their obsolete language and their impossible punishments, were to be revised, 
and brought into harmony with modem ideas and usages, the initiatory ceremony 
would gain in simplicity and convincingness. Brother MacBride has said a weighty 
word on this matter which I am glad to re-publish, especially since the utterance of 
such a scholar and authority would have much more weight than any word of ours: 



"It seems to us, with these obligations before us, there is only one course open to all 
Masons desiring the welfare of our ancient Institution, and that is to insist that a 
simpler, more sensible, and consequently, more solemn and binding form shall be 
substituted, wherever the corrupt form now prevails. The latter has neither the 
sanction of age, or law, nor of good taste." 


IV The removal of the cable tow after the administering of the obligation is a most 
significant act; it means that heretofore the candidate has been bound to the lodge by 
means of physical force and that hereafter he is bound by the invisible cord of his own 
honor. The removal of the cable tow, therefore, does not mean that he is less bound; it 
means that his tie henceforth is one that can never be removed or broken because it is 
in the heart. Before the obligation the candidate is held by compulsion; afterwards it is 
the Mystic Tie which binds him to his fellows with bonds unbreakable. 


NOTICE TO STUDY COMMITTEES 


Owing to the fact that Masonic work of all kinds is generally dispensed with during 
the months of July and August we are discontinuing the Correspondence Circle 
Bulletin section of THE BUILDER after this issue and shall resume its publication 
with the issue for September. By so doing we shall not get ahead of the lodges and 
study clubs using these installments. 




THE DREAMLAND OF YOUTH 
BY BRO. A. W. ARMSTRONG 


Our days are passing by; 

Their sandaled tread falls heedless on the ear, 



Yet here and there some landmarks do appear 
To catch the casual eye. 

Life looks so bright and fair 

To young hearts in its amaranthine bowers; 

A summer day with birds and bees and flowers, 
And sunshine everywhere. 

The streamlet in the vale, 

Whose dewey lips caress the lily's cheek, 

Seems in soft cadences to speak, 

Soothing the wind's low wail. 

The pale white cloud that smiles 
Along its pathway in the upper deeps, 

Is but a fairie barque within which sleeps 
Some queen of heavenly isles. 

Night holds her grand levee, 

And sends us messages upon the dew; 

The stars that glisten in the vault of blue, 

Sweet angel-eyes may be. 



O! brilliant youthful dreams! 

O! world of beauty to unpracticed eyes! 

Thou art more lovely than the starlit skies, 
With all their silvery beams. 

Let Hope still linger bright 

Amidst the tempest on life's stormy sea; 

Our boat shall weigh its anchor soon, and we 
Bid last adieu to Night. 

— o — 


MEMORIALS TO GREAT MEN WHO WERE MASONS 
BY BRO. FREDERICK W. EIART, OHIO 


JAMES A. GARFIELD 


OUR late Brother and President, James A. Garfield, was a man whom the Masonic 
Fraternity ever held in profound esteem and regard - for he was ever a worthy and loyal 
member and seriously accepted the suggestion that he, as a "just and upright" 
Craftsman, should "ever walk and act as such." His history and record is as an open 



book and needs no repetition here, except as to his record as a Mason which will he of 
special interest to the Craft. 


James A. Garfield was in training as a soldier of the Union Army in Camp Chase, just 
west of Columbus, Ohio, when he first crossed the tiled threshold. On November 29th, 
1861, his thirtieth birthday, he was initiated an Entered Apprentice and on December 
3rd was passed to the degree of a Fellowcraft, in Magnolia Lodge No. 20, at Columbus, 
Ohio. He immediately left for the front and went through the Civil War as a 
Fellowcraft. 


This Fellowcraft had wrought so valiantly in the military service that he returned as a 
Major General of Volunteers, and with a splendid record as a soldier. General Garfield 
was raised to the Master's degree on Nov. 22nd, 1864, in Columbus Lodge No. 30, 
Columbus, Ohio, at the request of Magnolia Lodge. 


In 1865 Brother Garfield dimitted from his mother lodge and affiliated with 
Garrettsville Lodge No. 246, at Garrettsville, Ohio, which was near his home and work 
at Hiram College, four miles distant. In 1868-69 he served as Chaplain of this lodge. On 
May 4, 1869, he became a charter member of Pentalpha Lodge No. 23, at Washington, 
D.C., of which lodge he remained a member until his death. 


During the year 1866 Garfield received the Capitular and Chivalric degrees in 
Washington, becoming a member of Columbia Chapter No. 15, R.A.M., (now No. 7), 
and of Columbia Commandery No. 2, K. T., in the Capital City. In 1871 he received the 
degrees of Select Architect and Most Excellent Architect and received the fourth and 
fifth degrees of the Scottish Rite in Mithras Lodge of Perfection, and the fourteenth 
degree on January 2nd, 1872, the intervening degrees having been communicated to 
him during the year 1871 by a no less distinguished and competent instructor than 
Brother Albert Pike, then Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Masonic 
Jurisdiction, A. and A. S. R., at Washington. 



Brother Garfield was buried in September, 1881, with Masonic honors, with an escort 
of Knights Templar. The Craft laid the cornerstone of his memorial at Cleveland and 
contributed largely to its construction and maintenance. Soon after his death steps were 
taken to erect a suitable memorial which should also be his tomb, and a Memorial 
Association was appointed consisting of the following distinguished citizens: Governor 
Foster, ex-President Hayes, Hon. J. H. Wade, Senator H. B. Payne, Joseph Perkins, T. 
P. Handy, Daniel P. Eels, W. S. Streator, J. H. Devereaux, Selah Chamberlain, John D. 
Rockefeller, H. B. Perkins, Hon. John Hay and J. H. Rhodes. This Association finally 
chose the design for the memorial, after a competitive contest of designs, selecting the 
design submitted by Mr. George Keller, of Hartford, Connecticut. Excavation for the 
foundation was begun in 1885 and the structure was dedicated with much ceremony on 
Decoration Day, May 30,1890. Knights Templars were much in evidence on that 
occasion, as the writer well remembers, and the paraders were drenched with rain on 
their return from the dedication exercises. 


The memorial to Garfield, when completed, cost approximately $225,000, and stands 
on a high terrace in Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio, a city where many of 
Garfield's interests settled and near to his birthplace and his Mentor home. The 
memorial is of stone, rising 180 feet above the ground and its base is 200 feet above the 
level of Lake Erie. From its tower there may be obtained a beautiful panoramic view of 
the city, and of the lake which it faces. 


A volume could be written describing the many features of the beautiful memorial. It is 
composed of a pointed tower, 180 feet high fronted by a square "porch," very much 
resembling a triumphal arch of ancient Rome. The break between the porch and the 
main tower is neutralized by the presence of two smaller, shorter towers which contain 
stairways. The porch is decorated with a series of five friezes in high relief representing 
events in the life of the man. One of these friezes contains that which probably no other 
national memorial contains, a Masonic picture - a Knight Templar in uniform. 


The first frieze at the left in the view shows Garfield as a country school-teacher; the 
second shows him bearing dispatches under fire, to General Thomas at Chickamaugua; 
the third, the central one over the entrance, shows him as an orator addressing a crowd 
of his fellow-citizens, while the fourth pictures him as taking the oath of office as 
President of the Republic and contains, besides the President, a number of portraits that 
are now historic but strangely omits the beloved mother of Garfield, who sat near and 



received his kiss after he had "kissed the book." The fifth frieze is an ideal 
representation of the dead President lying in state and is of peculiar interest. The 
photograph herewith shown indicates the stream of men and women, boys and girls, 
who viewed the remains of the martyred President and the very styles of men's and 
women's dress are preserved for our study. The stream of hushed people passes on, a 
young boy with his mother looks back at the bier, a sailor looks down into the face of 
his late Commander-in-Chief, and the mother lifts her babe to see the dead President. 
Then come an aged man and a young man, others tarry in front of the bier, and in the 
line is a colored man - perhaps a former slave. A girl adds another wreath to the heap 
beside the bier, and two soldiers in the full dress uniform of the Eighties, with spiked 
helmets and fixed, angular bayonets, stand guard over the remains. At the left of one 
soldier stands a Knight Templar at parade rest, in chapeau, baldric and gauntlets - a 
tribute to the Masonic character of the dead President. The Sir Knight is a sturdy 
specimen with features like that of General John A. Logan, and the artist's idea of a 
Capitular Mason is worthy of study. There is no mean style of man delineated here. 


This is probably the only monument or memorial of national character in all America 
that bears a Masonic figure or picture, and yet none can doubt the fitness and 
appropriateness of it, for the man here entombed and commemorated was a lover of 
Masonry and it had a large part in his life - a worthy part. And KnightsTemplar guarded 
his remains. 


Within the memorial is a gorgeous "shrine" inlaid with stucco-mosaic work in gold and 
colors, with another line of symbolic friezes, and memorial windows or panels for 
fourteen States, (the original thirteen, and Ohio), as well as panels representing "War" 
and "Peace," in both of which Garfield was distinguished. The rotunda is brilliant with 
mosaics and in the center of the shrine stands a life-size marble statue of the President 
rising from his chair to make an address. Alexander Doyle, a native of Ohio, was the 
sculptor of this meritorius marble portrait. 


Beneath the statue, in a crypt, is the casket of Garfield, and visitors may approach and 
view it. Here lie the remains of our Brother, stricken down in the discharge of his duty - 
and here many people visit and silently leam the lesson of memento mori, 
"remembering our dead." 



Large and small amounts for the erection of the memorial were contributed from 
citizens all over our land. About $89,000 of the total amount was given by Ohioans and 
$75,000 of this was contributed by citizens of Cleveland. The Ohio Knights Templar 
contributed $4,328.91. Cleveland people have contributed much more than is shown by 
the figures, in care and landscape effects, and probably in many contributions that were 
never listed; for Cleveland loved and loves Garfield. He was their friend and neighbor 
and loved the city as if it were his home town. Banks, parks and streets are named for 
him in this city. 


No attempt has been made in this article to do justice to the many beautiful details of 
the Garfield memorial in stone, mosaic, stained glass and surrounding landscape. Such 
details would fill a volume and would make memorable a personal visit. 


The relatives of Garfield have no knowledge of any existing Masonic relics and there 
are no relics of any sort exhibited in the memorial. Acknowledgment for valuable data 
in connection with Brother Garfield and the memorial are due Mr. A. N. Stowell, the 
genial custodian of the memorial, and also Brothers R. I. Clegg, of Cleveland, and 
George N. Cole, of New York, the latter a personal friend of our late Brother Garfield. 


— o — 


IN THE GOOD OLD TOWN 


Now and then we walk old streets 
In the good old town - 
Footbeats - heartbeats - 


Passing up and down. 
Though we wander far away 



We go making merry play, 

We go making holiday, 

In the good old town. 

Now and then we meet old friends 
In the good old town - 
Old friends - good friends - 
Walking up and down. 

Tho those friends are sleeping now 
Time has turned them with his plow, 
Still we meet them anyhow 
In the good old town. 

There are many memories 
In the good old town - 
Night thoughts - long thoughts - 
Passing up and down. 

In our wider world concerns 
Nothing new the spirit learns, 

Every hour of freedom turns 
To the good old town. 



Take me back when I am done 


To the good old town - 
Life done - work done - 
Let me settle down; 

And I know when you are free, 
Then, I know, wherever you be, 
You will come and walk with me 
In the good old town. 

- Douglas Mallock. 


— o — 


WHAT A FELLOW CRAFT OUGHT TO KNOW 


BY BRO. HAL RIVIERE, GEORGIA 


AS we look about this world in which we live and consider the various forms of life 
with which we are familiar, we find a sameness in the general plan that would be 
monotonous if it were not so beautiful in the infinite variety of the details. The life of 
a world, the life of a race, of a nation, a man, an animal, a flower, an insect— each of 
these goes through the same relative processes, a progress from beginning to end and 
as they pass beyond it seems likely that those processes are repeated. First there is the 
period of preparation, then the birth, the growth, the fruiting time, the decline and 
finally the dissolution. 



For countless ages a fragment clings to its sun— a world in preparation; eventually it is 
thrown whirling into space to begin a separate existence— the birth of a world; the 
gases solidify, land and water appear— the period of development; vegetable and 
animal life are brought forth, the period of fruitfulness; then come the decline and 
dissolution. 


A tiny seed lies in the ground; it bursts and the sprout makes its way to the top of the 
soil and a plant is bom; it grows and flowering, sheds a sweetness abroad and perhaps 
gives useful fruit; but its work done, it too, fades and dies. Whence came the plant and 
whither has it gone ? It knows not, nor cares. 


From a tiny egg in the waxen cell within the hive a larva is hatched, passes through 
the various stages of development until eventually the bee comes forth to perform its 
amazing, complicated series of duties; finally, with flayed wings worn out in 
gathering the nectar from a myriad of blossoms, it crawls away to die alone. Whence 
came the bee and whither has it gone? It knows not, nor cares. 


After a suitable period of preparation a babe is bom, grows to manhood, does his 
work whether of good or ill, declines and dies. Whence came the man and whither has 
he gone? Man knows not, but cares and the question that he has ever asked himself 
from the time when the first gleams of intelligence were developed in him is, "whence 
come you ?" and later, "whither are you traveling?" Perhaps the first question a child 
will ask upon seeing a new bom infant is, "where did he come from?" Later, as he 
comes to realize the meaning of death he will ask, "where do the dead go?" For there 
is in mankind a feeling that death does not end it all and he has ever refused to 
concede to death the victory, feeling rather that human life is a preparation for a 
greater life to come beyond the grave. 


Two stages of human life have ever been awe inspiring, Infancy and Old Age; the 
infant, a candidate for the mysteries of this world, and the old man, a candidate for the 
mysteries beyond the grave. Whence comes the infant, from the everywhere, or 
nowhere? Who can stand beside the cradle of a babe only a few days old and see it 



smile in its sleep, without feeling that it has had an experience? It has no 
consciousness of the present world; then whence its smile? Can there be still 
memories of the everywhere it has left before the experience of this world crowd them 
out? What possibilities lie before it during the few years it is to spend in this life! Who 
knows the consequences that may hang upon the use it makes of the opportunities of 
human existence! And so it is that Old Age also, facing the end of human existence, 
facing a journey into undiscovered countries, fills the contemplative mind with serious 
thoughts. If there be sleeping and dreaming in that undiscovered country from whose 
bourne no traveler returns, will the dreams that shall come to him newly born to the 
heavenly life, cause sweet smiles to play across his radiant face and bear witness to 
the beauty and happiness of a useful mortal life ? 


It is only by realizing that human life is a preparation for a greater life beyond, that he 
has lived before and shall live again after death ends mortal existence, it is only by so 
realizing that one can understand the significance of Freemasonry because it is an 
epitome of human life and each degree teaches the duties of certain stages of life 
using the customs of the Ancient Operative Masons as a foundation and teaching great 
moral and intellectual lessons by means of allegories and symbols. 


When we speak of our Ancient Operative brethren we allude to those men who 
composed the lodges of stone masons who built the cathedrals, abbeys, temples and 
national and civic edifices prior to the seventeenth century. But those men were not 
merely stone masons; their leaders were architects and master builders and possessed 
that secret knowledge of the building arts which they guarded among themselves and 
taught only to those proven worthy. 


Operative Masons have plied their art in the building of many famous structures from 
the dawn of civilization in Egypt and we have records of many distinguished Master 
builders; The first architect to erect a building of stone was Imhotep the Wise, who 
completed his initial work about the year 3000 B.C. A few years later, in 2900 B.C., 
the architects of King Khufu built the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, an undertaking which 
demonstrates upon the part of those men, a knowledge of arithmetic, geometry and 
astronomy marvelous to contemplate. 



Egypt became the fountain head of knowledge and as the secrets of the builders' arts 
were jealously guarded by those learned in architecture and the correlated arts and 
sciences, men of other nations journeyed thither to be initiated into the mysteries. 
Those found worthy were so initiated, spread abroad to ply their trade and became the 
teachers and builders of other nations. Babylonia, Assyria, Phoenicia, Crete and later 
Greece and Rome, felt the influence of Egyptian civilization. 


Next to the Pyramids, the most famous structure of ancient times was the Temple of 
Solomon at Jerusalem. This was built by men of Phoenicia headed by Hiram the 
Architect whom Hiram, King of Tyre, sent to supervise the work for his friend and 
ally, Solomon, King of Israel. 


It is comparatively easy to trace the progress of the Art of Architecture from that day 
until modem times. In company with that progress went oathbound secret societies 
guarding the knowledge of the builders' arts and today we find Speculative Masonry 
as the direct descendant of those old secret societies of builders. The knowledge of 
Architecture once so closely guarded in oath-bound fraternities has become the 
common property of all who care to learn it. Lodges of Operative Masons have ceased 
to exist but Speculative Masonry has attached a symbolic meaning to the various 
working tools and to many words, terms and expressions used by the Ancient 
brethren. 


As the lessons of Speculative Masonry are taught so largely in terms of the practices 
of the Ancient Operative Masons a few words as to their customs will make it easier 
to draw a parallel between those practices and the ceremonies of this degree. 


In ancient times, when a person desired to become a Mason he made application to 
some Master who, if he was pleased with the applicant's appearance, took him on trial. 
The trial satisfactory, he was formally Entered as an Apprentice, that being his 
Masonic birth. Entered Apprentices were required to serve for seven years, that being 
a period of growth or development and during that time they learned the fundamental 
principles of the Craft; obedience, sobriety, truthfulness, industry and consideration 
for and charity toward the brethren; they learned to adjust themselves to their 
surroundings and to work in harmony with those about them, meanwhile catching a 



vision of the seriousness of life and the beauty and dignity of their calling. Each was 
expected to become fixed in the habits of right living, skillful in the handling of his 
tools, familiar with the labors of a stone mason and ambitious to advance. The time of 
apprenticeship drawing to a close he worked upon and perfected a masterpiece as an 
evidence of his skill, which he carried before the Annual Assembly where he was 
required to stand an examination to demonstrate to his superiors his ability and his 
worth; upon the result of the examination depended his advancement. 


In our time, my brother, Free and Accepted Masons carry out many of the ancient 
customs. You were initiated as an Entered Apprentice, served a suitable time as such, 
passed a satisfactory examination before the lodge, were elected to advance and have 
been passed to the degree of Fellow Craft. But I wonder if during the days of your 
apprenticeship, you became proficient in the use of the working tools of an Entered 
Apprentice. You remember that they are the twenty four inch gauge, or rule, and the 
gavel, or mallet. 


Our Ancient Operative brethren used the gauge to measure or lay out their work. You, 
my brother, should use your mind or reason to measure your work as you labor in the 
building of a beautiful character. During your apprenticeship have you used your 
reason to measure yourself, your conduct, your usefulness, your capacity for service? 
Do you measure up to the high standard of upright moral and Masonic manhood? We 
are not enough in the habit of so measuring ourselves but it is only by so doing that 
we can keep our characters straight. 


But it is not enough for one to measure himself; a man may measure and measure yet 
accomplish nothing. 


Shakespeare says "Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and 
after, gave us not that capability and Godlike reason to fust in us unused." That is the 
great point— to use our faculties. As our Ancient Operative brethren used the gavel to 
knock off the corners of rough stones, so we are to use our will power to divest 
ourselves of the vices and imperfections of our characters. Have you so used your will 
power? Is there any fault, any imperfection, any vice that you have resolved to forsake 
since you became a laborer among us? Remember, 



"You will be what you will to be; Let failure find its false content In that poor word 
environment, But spirit scorns it and is free. 


"It masters time, it conquers space, It cowes that boastful trickster, chance, And bids 
the tyrant circumstance Uncrown and fill a servant's place. 


"The human will, that force unseen, The offspring of a deathless soul, Can hew a way 
to any goal Though walls of granite intervene. 


"Be not impatient at delay But wait as one who understands, When spirit rises and 
commands, The gods are ready to obey." 


My brother, it is a deplorable fact that this beautiful Fellow Craft degree is neither 
understood nor appreciated by the vast majority of Masons. Its purpose is not 
discerned and there seems to be no connection between it and the other two degrees of 
the Blue Lodge. In reality, the three degrees of Freemasonry form a beautiful system 
and the Fellow Craft is the only logical connecting link between the other two; but it 
is only when a view of the whole is taken that one comes to see the necessary place in 
the scheme that each degree occupies. We must bear in mind that Masonic Light is the 
object of a Mason's search and that Masonic Light is a symbol for Truth; we must 
know that in trying to answer the question of his origin and destiny man has come to 
realize that there are certain laws that govern him. These he has specified as Divine 
Truth and it is to know and to bring himself into conscious harmony with them that he 
labors. 


One of our beautiful charges opens with these words: "The ways of Virtue are 
beautiful; Knowledge is attained by degrees; Wisdom dwells with contemplation; 
there must we seek her." In those words we have expressed the degree plan of 
Freemasonry. Man has found that in striving to attain Divine Truth a foundation of 
good habits is necessary— a training in the ways of virtue; these good habits are used 



in the acquisition of knowledge or the development of the intellect; a combination of 
good habits and high intellectual development produces a lofty train of thought 
whence result keen judgment, foresight, prudence- all those qualities which go to 
make a wise man. 


"Wisdom," said Solomon, "is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom." Wisdom 
might be defined as Virtue plus Knowledge multiplied by Contemplation. Its 
attainment is a slow process, a matter of growth. Wisdom is the border-land from 
whose heights a man beholds Truth while Truth is the land of Canaan which a Moses 
may behold yet never fully attain. 


The foundation of Wisdom is Character. It is in the building of character that every 
Fellow Craft is employed and this degree deals particularly with the training of the 
body in right habits and the cultivation of the mind. The legend of this degree presents 
the matter in beautiful, logical form and should leave no doubt in the mind of the 
candidate that the ways of virtue are beautiful and that knowledge is attained by 
degrees. 


Let us ever remember that it is not the purpose of Freemasonry to enter into scientific 
dissertations upon Hearing, Seeing, Feeling, Smelling and Tasting; by entering such a 
maze the lessons of the degree are lost. Only architects and delvers into antiquity care 
to enter minutely into the history of the various Orders of Architecture or to learn with 
mathematical exactitude the proportion of the several columns. Nor is it the purpose 
of the Order to define Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and 
Astronomy. Such learned disquisitions upon the Senses, Orders of Architecture and 
the Liberal Arts and Sciences are a relic of the bygone days of Operative Masonry 
when the lodge was workshop, home and school— in fact, the whole life of the 
brethren; such practices were then advisable and necessary but in our time the object 
in view is to learn practical lessons from a symbolical presentation of those subjects. 


The proper development and use of the five human senses enables us to support and 
protect ourselves, to enjoy the blessings and comforts of life that surround us and to 
contribute to the happiness of others. Their improper use may lead to animalism on 
the one hand or asceticism on the other; in either case it will tend to limit the 



capabilities. Overindulgence and excesses tend to blunt and asceticism to dwarf the 
bodily powers while the reward for moderation and simplicity in the employment of 
the senses is certain and sure. 


From the Orders of Architecture we should leam that an absolute mastery of the 
details pertaining to his particular line of work is necessary for a man's success; and as 
these orders are used to beautify and adorn as well as to be of service, we should not 
be satisfied with building merely an upright character but should cultivate those 
graces that are so pleasing when naturally and sincerely displayed. As the Ionic 
column, emblematic of Wisdom, bears a mean proportion between the ornamental and 
solid orders, so our characters should preserve the mean between a sordid, mechanical 
existence and artistic temperamentalism. 


The acquisition of knowledge and the training of the mind into habits of logical 
thought is no less a part of character building than the training of the body. The study 
of the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences is typical of that intellectual development that 
is necessary before wisdom can be attained and the blending of the beautiful and 
pleasing arts with the useful sciences teaches us that something more than utility is 
required in the well rounded character. One may reason logically in ungrammatical 
language but if his speech be polished by the use of correct grammatical constructions 
and adorned by the use of rhetorical figures, his reasoning and personality are given 
an added force. While the training of the mind to a high degree in the mathematical 
sciences is desirable it is not sufficient in a well developed character for one so trained 
may become coldly precise unless a love for the beautiful enters in to temper his 
exactitude. If in studying astronomy, a man becomes so engrossed with the lines, 
angles, circles and distances of the heavenly bodies that he perceives none of the 
beauty of the handiwork of the Great Architect nor hears the "music of the stars," he is 
one of those who having eyes to see, see not and having ears to hear, hear not. 


One of the purposes of this degree is to teach perfection in practice and accuracy in 
information. Science is systematic thought; it is organized knowledge, while art is 
skill in the employment of the principles of a science. One should cultivate a due 
regard for all phases of intellectual activity, remembering that perfection in any art or 
calling will come in the degree that knowledge of it is systematic and orderly. A 
Fellow Craft should not be content to perform his duty in a mechanical way but 
should learn the underlying scientific principles upon which it is based, thus becoming 



an artist instead of a laborer; his daily toil a joy instead of a task and his life a blessing 
and inspiration to those who come in contact with him. 


Realizing that man is a builder engaged in the erection of a temple of character fit for 
the indwelling of the living God, Freemasonry uses the Temple of Solomon as a type 
to visualize the processes of building and to illustrate the end in view. Now that you 
have been passed to the degree of Fellow Craft, the account of the building of this 
Temple as recorded in the Bible will be of peculiar interest to you. Many traditions in 
regard to the Temple have been handed down to us, one of the most beautiful being 
the legend of the Fellow Craft degree. This legend is founded upon a verse in the sixth 
chapter of I Kings, which is in these words: "The door for the Middle Chamber was in 
the right side of the house and they went up by winding stairs into the Middle 
Chamber and out of the Middle into the Third." We must not confuse history and 
tradition. Eighty thousand men would find it impossible to ascend to the second story 
of a building in one afternoon and receive their wages nor would the room contain the 
wages due them. This incident is of value to us as Masons only insofar as we see the 
lessons designed to be taught and make practical use of them in the development of 
our characters. 


After faithfully performing his duty the ancient Fellow Craft was invested with certain 
words, signs and tokens that secured his admission into the Middle Chamber where he 
received the wages due him. A shirker or an impostor might ascend the stairs but only 
he who was duly prepared by being in possession of these words, signs and tokens 
could gain admission. 


So in life. Every man is invested with certain words, signs and tokens that determine 
the circle to which he shall be admitted. Every honest effort put forth and every 
faithful performance of duty bring their reward. A man may enter any circle or attain 
any desired height if he shall work until his labor brings as a reward the words, signs 
and tokens necessary to gain an entrance into the coveted place. The passwords must 
be unequivocal and no impostor by dissimulation can escape the vigilance that 
eternally rewards a man according to his deserts. There must be evidence in plenty 
that the preparation is not superficial nor assumed as a cloak to gain unworthy ends. It 
is not until a sign or token is given that the required qualities have become established 
as part and parcel of his very being that a man is accepted with confidence into the 
innermost circle of his desire. He cannot hope to enter the circle of those who have 



labored and earned the wages due who displays no token that by earnest effort he has 
earned his reward. Man must give equal value for what he receives. He must pay the 
price. 


So also, the laborer is worthy of his hire. Solomon gave the workers upon the Temple 
a wage of Com, Wine and Oil. These, being emblematic of nourishment, refreshment 
and joy, indicate that the honest, earnest effort receives not only a material wage but 
that there should be a wage of satisfaction and joy in the performance of duty without 
which a man labors in vain and spends his strength for naught. He who finds no joy in 
his work has not received the full wages of a Fellow Craft. 


There are three things that a Fellow Craft should value highly and treasure as precious 
jewels; an attentive ear, an instructive tongue and a faithful breast. The attentive ear 
symbolizes that earnest desire for knowledge, that openness of mind, that willingness 
to learn that keeps a man young in spite of his years. No quality is more valuable than 
that of finding the instructive tongue in all the experiences of life, hearing its message 
and treasuring that message within the repository of a faithful breast. He who 
earnestly seeks knowledge will value every source of information and if the 
instmctive tongue be shaip and wound the pride or tear the heart yet will he receive its 
message humbly, gladly. "Man, know thyself," is a goal gained sooner through 
experience in the ways of adversity than by resting on flowery beds of ease or through 
the lying tongue of flattery. 


And now, my brother, that you have attained the Middle Chamber and stand in the 
strength of manhood to receive the reward of a faithful workman, remember that it is 
not by your own strength alone that you have attained this position but by the 
assistance and guidance of the Great Architect of the Universe. "Not by might, nor by 
power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." All the labor you have expended and all the 
efforts you have put forth in the development of your character have been to the end 
that you might attain the Wisdom to know the will of God concerning you and to 
make of yourself a temple fit for the indwelling of the Most High. 


The true Mason is essentially a religious man, fearing God and keeping his laws and 
reverence for his name should be a distinguishing characteristic of all who have gone 



this way. Let no profanity or irreverance for his Holy Name bring discredit upon your 
profession as a Mason. 


— o — 


A HINT AS TO PENALTIES BY BRO. H. L. HAYWOOD, IOWA 


Shakespeare borrowed many of his plots from other authors and from old books, but 
the materials wherewith he filled in the frame-work was taken, almost all of it, from 
observation and experience. The dramatist was a man with wide-opened eyes who 
was quick to catch up contemporaneous ideas, facts and customs in order to establish 
a basis of contact with his hearers and readers. It is this that gives some value to the 
reference made in The Tempest to a method of execution that is not without a mite of 
interest to students of the origins of our ritual. The Tempest was written, according to 
a consensus of expert opinion, somewhere near 161 1. At this time, as the reader will 
know, the ritual had not yet been cast into its present form; the inference may be made 
that the method of execution referred to by Shakespeare was well known in the 
beginnings of the seventeenth century, and that the men who wrote the penalties may 
have borrowed a hint from it. This is a reasonable conjecture not to be lightly thrown 
aside when research is being made for light on such a foggy problem as the origin of 
the penalties. 


The reference above mentioned occurs in the famous description of the ship-wreck in 
the first scene of the first act of The Tempest. The boatswain, who has been laboring 
breathlessly to make his ship storm-safe and to keep his men toiling toward safety, has 
been interrupted by the nobles who have come up on deck. He upbraids them for their 
interference, whereupon Antonio, the Duke of Milan, exclaims: 


"We're merely cheated out of our lives by drunkards. This wide-chopped (wide- 
mouthed) rascal— wouldst thou might lie drowning the washing of ten tides ! " 



On this Professor Hudson makes the following comment: "Pirates were hanged on the 
shore at low water- mark, and left till three tides had overwashed them. 'Ten' is 
substituted for 'three,' either for the sake of alliteration or to intensify the guilt of 'the 
widechopped rascal.' " 




UNIFICATION IN THE PHILIPPINES 


BY BRO. CHARLES S. LOBINGIER, CHINA 


March 15, 1917. 


To the Sovereign Grand Commander and the Supreme Council: 


Illustrious and Very Dear Brethren: 


IN closing his memorable Allocution (1) of 1915 the Grand Commander said: "Let us 
above all else be united! Discord and dissension are destructive forces engendered by 
causes which should not be tolerated among Masons. It is only when 'unified' that our 
Scottish Freemasonry can truly exercise that influence in the World which its power 
should enable it to do." 


It is with a gratification second only to that which I know you will all feel as a result 
of it, that I am able to report for my jurisdiction a practical observance of this 
admonition, and a complete realization of the ideal. Within the past year a divided 
house has been joined together. Where there was diversity there is now unity; where 



there was weakness there is potential strength. In short it is my privilege to announce 
the unification of our rite in the Philippines. Not that there has ever been dissension 
among the bodies of our obedience here; but, as you will note from previous reports of 
mine, Scottish Rite bodies, acknowledging allegiance to other Supreme Councils, 
have continued to exist there alongside our own. The reasons for this were mainly 
historical and call for a brief review. 


In the Philippines, Masonry considerably antedates the American occupation. As long 
ago as 1856 the Spanish Admiral Malcampo, later Governor General, organized a 
lodge at Cavite under the Grand Orient of Portugal. (2) For some years, however, 
Masonic membership in the Philippines was restricted to Spaniards. Finally in the 
later eighties a movement was inaugurated in Spain itself (3) by Miguel Morayta, 
recently deceased, and then head of the Spanish Grand Orient, and Marcelo H. del 
Pilar, a Filipino residing in Spain, which resulted in admitting some leading natives of 
the Philippines into the ranks of Masonry; and then it began to exert a real influence 
upon the affairs of the archipelago. It was the ideas of the Scottish Rite which largely 
furnished the inspiration for the uprising against the Spanish government in 1896. All 
Masons were then under suspicion; many suffered and others died for their allegiance 
to the craft and its principles. Then, too, the Spanish Masons were practically the only 
Spaniards who sympathized with the Filipinos in their struggles for a more liberal 
form of government. It was not strange, therefore, that, in the hearts of the latter, 
Spanish Freemasonry won a high place and that those who had allied themselves 
therewith were loth to leave it notwithstanding changed conditions. Indeed I 
sometimes wonder if we, ourselves, have rated sufficiently high the character and 
achievements of our Spanish Brethren and if we have not been too prone to judge 
them by adventurers, parading under their name, in our own country. We must 
remember that to be a Mason in Spain involves a great personal sacrifice and that few 
but the tried and true are found in their ranks. Perhaps for that reason they are 
extremely careful whom they receive and require a long period of probation (4) such 
as formerly prevailed in our own jurisdiction. (5) 


American Masonry, coming into the Philippines with the army, followed for a time 
the course of its predecessor in admitting only Americans, just as the Spanish lodges 
at first received only Europeans, but in establishing the Scottish Rite there I insisted 
that there should be no invidious distinctions of nationality and the first class upon 
which I conferred the 320, in 191 1, included a well known Filipino, now a Judge, who 
has been very helpful to us ever since. Other Filipinos, not inconsiderable in number, 
have joined the Manila bodies from time to time, and, so far as I have been able to 



prevent it, there has been no deviation from the principle upon which those bodies 
were started. Meanwhile, not unnaturally, some of the lodges and other bodies 
claiming authority from the Grand Orient of Spain continued to work. The transfer of 
sovereignty had severed that authority as completely as it had the political tie (6) but it 
was difficult to make this clear to Masons who knew little of the Anglo-Saxon 
doctrine of exclusive territorial jurisdiction; who felt a sentimental attachment to the 
Spanish Grand Orient for the reasons already mentioned; and who, as yet, saw little 
manifestation of a similar attitude among American Masons. It seemed like asking 
much of our Filipino brethren to require them to surrender an affiliation which had 
cost them so dear while nothing was offered in its place, and when they were not 
responsible for the grounds on which the requirement was based. While, therefore, our 
Scottish Rite bodies in the Philippines could hold no official intercourse with those 
claiming authority from Spain, it was quite possible to get their viewpoint and to 
prepare the ground for a solution of the most important problem which confronted 
us— the union under one head of all Scottish Rite Masons in the Archipelago. If you 
will refer to my previous reports upon our status here you will note that while I have 
repeatedly called attention to the existence of a Scottish Rite Chapter of Rose Croix, 
claiming authority from Spain, I have never recommended drastic action toward it, 
believing that a solution of the difficulty could be found which would be just and 
honorable to both parties. Fortunately my belief has proven to have been well 
founded. 


The Grand Commander will recall that, during a conference with him in October, 

1915, 1 brought up the question of establishing a new group of bodies in the 
Philippines and he stated that the granting of Letters Temporary was entirely within 
my discretion. Among the puiposes which I had in view in this project was unification 
and the placing of the Rite on a basis which would render it a real force in the country. 


Upon my return I took the matter up with two of our members, Bros. Austin Craig, 
32d, and Manuel Camus, 32d, who were in close touch with Masons of Spanish 
allegiance, and by February of 1916 conditions were ripe for opening a new Lodge of 
Perfection. The petitioners for Letters Temporary were all members of the Manila 
bodies but the new lodge was soon exercising its express authority to receive new 
members by initiating and affiliation. 



On August 14, 1916, 1 opened under Letters Temporary, Burgos Chapter of Rose 
Croix; on December 22, Malcampo Preceptory was opened and finally on February 
14, 1917, 1 enjoyed the extreme satisfaction of completing the group at an occasion 
marked by imposing ceremonies, including the presentation of Letters Temporary to 
Rizal Consistory. 


Meanwhile the work of winning over our brethren of Spanish allegiance had been 
actively proceeding and in this Brothers Craig and Camus had found an active ally in 
Bro. Manuel L. Quezon, 32d, then of the Spanish bodies. Toward the close of 
prolonged negotiations and innumerable conferences with members of the last named 
bodies I addressed to them the following letter: 


Manila, P.I., Feb. 5, 1917. 


To the Scottish Rite Masons residing in the Philippines, but belonging to Bodies 
Chartered by Other Recognized Supreme Councils: 


Very Dear Brethren: 


In the name of Universal Masonry, for whose realization we all hope and strive, and 
in behalf of the Mother Supreme Council of the World, whose Deputy I have the 
honor to be, I take pleasure in extending to you a cordial and fraternal invitation to 
present applications for affiliation with the Bodies of the Rite now working in this 
Valley under the authority of said last named Supreme Council. 


It is of the utmost importance to the interests of the Craft in these Islands that 
Masonry in all its forms be united. In union there is strength; in division weakness. 



The growth of the Bodies referred to has been gratifying and rapid, but the Mother 
Council long to bring under its protecting aegis all Scottish Rite Masons residing 
within its territorial jurisdiction, and to enlist them under a common banner. 


Come with us Brethren, and make the union complete. Fraternally yours, Charles 
S. Lobingier, 33d Hon., Deputy of the Supreme Council. 


The members of the Spanish Bodies finally decided to dissolve their organizations, 
return their charters and petition for affiliation with the new Philippine bodies. They 
did this without exacting any concessions in return. They surrendered a status which 
was to them cherished and valuable; they even paid the fees of "newly created" 
members under Statutes, Art. VI, Sec. 6, and they did not reserve the small privilege 
of continuing their former bodies under new charters. 


Their petitions were acted upon favorably by such of the bodies addressed as were 
then organized and they were ready for affiliation in the highest degree which they 
had received in the Spanish bodies. Not many of them, however, had passed beyond 
the 30d; for in Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, the 3 Id and 32d are not conferred 
generally but are confined to a limited number, much like our 33d Honorary; and, as I 
have already shown, the Regulations of the Spanish Supreme Council require a much 
longer interval to elapse between the reception of degrees than do our own. 


To complete the affiliation of the petitioners it was necessary that each "take all the 
pledges and vows of all the Degrees of the Body with which he affiliates." (7) For this 
purpose they were assembled in large numbers on the evenings of February 12 and 14. 
Our obligations had all been translated into Spanish by Bro. Leo Fischer, 32d, 
Secretary of the Philippine Bodies, for the benefit of those petitioners who understand 
that language better than English, and were administered in full after the body to 
which they corresponded had been duly opened. The new Philippine bodies will need 
to work in Spanish as well as English and it will save them a tremendous and 
unnecessary burden if they can have the benefit of what has been done in Porto Rico. 



Thus, through the organization of the new Philippine bodies, the unification of the 
Scottish Rite in the Archipelago has been accomplished. I trust that the Charters for 
these new bodies will be issued in due course. For I cannot but regard this result as 
one of the most important and far reaching achievements which has yet been 
consummated within the jurisdiction of our Supreme Council. 


(1) Transactions, (1915) 148. 

(2) This was known as Logia Primera Luz Filipina. See The Far Eastern Freemason, 
II, 103. 

(3) See Derbyshire, Introduction to Translation of Rizal's "Noli Me Tangere" XXXIX. 

(4) Bro. C. A. Tansilll, K.C.C.H., of the Manila Bodies has been investigating this 
interesting topic and reports as follows: "The minimum time for progression in the 
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry as practiced by the Spanish 
Grand Orient requires that an Entered Apprentice must serve to the satisfaction of his 
brethren, not less than five months before being passed to the degree of Fellow Craft, 
and the Fellow Craft must serve to the satisfaction of his brethren, not less than seven 
months before being raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason. Thus, an Entered 
Apprentice is under the careful scrutiny of his brethren for at least one year before 
being raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason. 


"Subjoined is the minimum time for progression and advancement in the Supreme 
Council of Spain, under which Supreme Council the 4th, 9th, 13 th, 18th, 24th, 30th, 
31st, 32nd and 33rd degrees are considered essentially necessary to be conferred in 
full form: 


"Master Mason— 1 year to receive the 4d 
4d " — 1 year to receive the 9d 
9d " —1 year to receive the 13d 
13d Mason— 1 year to receive the 18d 



1 8d " —2 years to receive the 24d 
24d " —2 years to receive the 30d 
30d " —1 year to receive the 3 Id 
3 Id " — 1 year to receive the 32d 
32d " —1 year to receive the 33d 


"It will be noticed that an Entered Apprentice may not attain the 32d until after at least 
eleven years' service, and that it requires ten years' service as a Master Mason before 
receiving the 32d." 


(5) See the observations of 111. Bro. Hugo in the New Age (XXV 40 et seq.) showing 
that eighty-one months were once required for taking twenty- five degrees. 

(6) Allocution, 1905, p. 47; Cf. Id. 1903, p. 45. 

(7) Statutes, sec. 32, Art. VIII. 


AN AMBASSADOR 

BY BRO. JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, ENGLAND 


LINKING ENGLAND AND AMERICA 


PRESIDENT WILSON'S desire is to make the world "secure for democracy," to 
abolish the nightmare fear of sudden war, and with it the necessity for maintaining huge 



armies and navies. It is no selfish motive, for he wishes for the people whom he rules 
what they would eagerly and whole-heartedly share with all mankind. 


At present that high puipose is not only unaccomplished, but actually menaced with 
final disappointment. So far from hard-won democratic institutions being safe they are 
at this moment in dire peril. They are in peril so great and urgent that a peace-loving 
people, separated from Europe by a thousand leagues of ocean, still cherishing a 
tradition inherited from Washington and Franklin of non-intervention in the quarrels of 
the Old World, feel that duty, religion, honour, and humanity bid them take up arms and 
wage war with all their might against a soulless autocracy which threatens to enslave 
the world. 


This seems to me the greatest event of modem times, because, if it be crowned with 
success, as we believe it will be, it may well inaugurate a new era, the Era of Settled 
Peace. And not only or chiefly because the "men that delight in war" have been 
subdued, but because the association of Britain and America in this great and holy 
cause is likely to eradicate, to uproot the last vestige of remembrance of the quarrel 
which separated them. 


That quarrel has long ago been virtually forgotten in Britain. But American history 
begins not with Julius Csesar, but with George Washington, not with the Battle of 
Hastings, but with a revolution, which resulted in thirteen British colonies, hitherto 
passionately loyal, taking the style and title of the United States of America; not with 
Magna Charta, but with that Declaration of Independence the signing of which is the 
chief landmark in the American citizen's historical landscape. 


The boys and girls read of these things in the earliest pages of their school-books. 
Bunker Hill and Lexington become magical names to them. First impressions being 
lasting, grown-up Americans have been apt to forget it was a German king, George the 
Third, opposed by the best and noblest of his advisers, and contrary to the wishes of the 
people of Britain, whose blind obstinacy and congenital insanity drove the American 
colonies into revolt. 



Yes, and they are also apt to forget, whilst knowing speeches of Franklin, Webster and 
Lincoln by heart, the words thundered by Pitt in the British House of Commons: "I 
rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of 
liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make 
slaves of the rest." 


Today those three millions have become one hundred millions. Yet, mark the miracle, 
America is still but a larger Britain across the ocean. From Atlantic to Pacific she 
speaks the tongue of Shakespeare and Bunyan; her public and private life is based on 
English custom; her traditions and literature are one with the Motherland; her ideals of 
civilisation those of the isle from which her Pilgrim Fathers sailed. 


Furthermore, America's greatest church was founded by Wesley, an Oxford clergyman; 
her two leading universities, Yale and Harvard, by Englishmen; every president she has 
elected, except two, has borne a British surname. Her laws are confessedly founded on 
English law, and the usages and precedents of the courts in the two countries are almost 
identical. Her ideas of liberty, justice, and freedom, for conscience, for the individual, 
for the Press, are the ideas promulgated by the great Puritans, Cromwell, Hampden, 
Milton, and Bunyan. 


In short, the influence upon the fundamental life of America of all other nations 
combined is negligible compared with the profound and ineradicable influence of 
Britain. 


Then how greatly desirable is a sympathetic and intelligent understanding between 
these two kindred peoples. Neither nation has taken sufficient pains to understand the 
other. Superficial differences have been able to obscure fundamental unities. 


But in the furnace of this world war, upon the anvil of a common and noble puipose, 
under the hammer, kindred peoples will be rewelded, and then in their keeping chiefly 
will be the future of mankind. 



And who can doubt that the heart-union of the British Empire and the United States of 
America means for the world an era of unbroken Peace in which service and not 
enslavement, enlightenment and not exploitation, arts - ay, hearts - and not arms will 
be the watchword of statesmen and rulers? Certainly all whe help forward this great 
friendship are thereby labouring for the better future of humanity. 




EDITORIAL 


FRATERNIZING IN FRANCE 


FRATERNIZING with the French Masons progresses apace, one Grand Lodge after 
another having stepped in that direction. It is curious to note that while we are showing 
such a tendency to cross the frontier of our own creation against the Freemasonry of 
France, the British whom we first followed away from the land of Lafayette are not 
nearly so ready to return though their regard for that nation has been proven by the 
greatest sacrifices and the utmost tests of loyalty and devotion. 


While British are formally far from the Freemasonry of France they are close to the 
French Freemasons. There has been neither submission nor subjection. The one and the 
other retain their individual dogmas, their peculiar doctrines endure, yet their entwining 
friendliness calls a truce to the acidities of the past. 


Frigidity between French and British is melted into fraternity by the sunlight of a 
common cause. Righteousness enriches recollection with the warmer treasures of a joint 
purpose for humanity. Each with parallel aims proves to the other how adequate indeed 



to the end is their resource for good, that perhaps the difference after all is rather in 
name and phrases than in principles. 


We shall sympathetically watch the fine old traditional Masonry of Greater Britain - of 
the United Kingdom and its overseas empire, the mother country and her colonies - and 
that stalwart French Freemasonry with her sociological and philosophic excellencies, as 
the two go forward in the brunt of gigantic battles. Out from all these gory struggles 
there will be a rebirth of the ancient faiths, not throwing them upon the scrap heap, but 
the old less cold, the renewed less raw. 


Our hearts are with them. When dawns the sun of victory there will be many a tale told 
of the place Freemasonry has filled for brethren united in the family of fraternity though 
having their birthrights from quite different Grand Lodges. R.l.C. 


* * * 


THE A.A.O.N.M.S. 


Perhaps the Committee on History will this year make a final report to the Imperial 
Council at Atlantic City. Maybe this is not to be expected. 


Death has been busy with the older members whose memories held the facts of the 
Shrine's origin. Every year this reservoir recedes. Whatever we can do to get the 
particulars into perfect consonance and into complete records should be done while our 
pioneer brethren remain available for checking up the information advanced by others, 
and being themselves in turn subjected to the same sort of checks against any and every 
inaccuracy. 



Not unlikely there has also been an inclination to preserve the true story of the Shrine 
from what some may deem excessive publicity. Why blaze with bright sunlight what 
has thrived without it? Where there was no evil, there are no regrets remaining. And 
what a joke will endure while there is an element of surprise about it is one thing. 
Turning the light upon it brings about an entirely different outcome. 


But have we not arrived at the stage when the true story of the Shrine's origin may be 
disclosed? Has the old account of its Eastern source any life? How muck is worth 
repetition as fact or as joke? 


Writing as one who dearly loves the Shrine for its charity and cheer, who richly enjoys 
both its boys and noise, sympathy and cymbals, I beg of the historians candor. For to 
me the Shrine will be as attractive if its first ritual were fashioned by Fleming, 
flourished with Florence, and practically elaborated by Briggs, these noblest of the 
nobility. Fower Broadway, or the Knickerbocker Club, or Moquin's old quarters, suit 
me just as well for a place of origin as a fellaheen's hut near the pyramids. All may not 
think so. Tradition dies hard among Masons. For those there will ever be jewels such as 
the sad passing of our late Brother (?) the Khedive of Egypt as reported and adorned by 
a whimsically diverting correspondent at Malta! But the truth will out, even in an 
affidavit. R.l.C. 


— o — 


RAIN 


ft always rains when I go out 
And clears when I come in, 
Until I very often doubt 
The theory of sin. 



They tell me that it rains upon 
The unjust and the just; 

It doesn't rain on ev'ryone 
The way they say it must. 

Some sinners never get a bath 
When they go out to stroll; 

The weather always pours its wrath 
On me, unlucky soul. 

There is no justice in the strife 
Of living, that is plain; 

I've had to take, all thru my life. 
Somebody else's rain. 

- Douglas Mallock. 

THE LIBRARY 


EDITED BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD 



The object of this Department is to acquaint our readers with time-tried Masonic books 
not always familiar; with the best Masonic literature now being published; and with 
such non-Masonic books as may especially appeal to Masons. The Library Editor will 
be very glad to render any possible assistance to studious individuals or to Study Clubs 
and Lodges, either through this Department or by personal correspondence; if you wish 
to leam something concerning any book - what is its nature, what is its value, or how it 
may be obtained - be free to ask him. If you have read a book which you think is worth 
a renew write us about it; if you desire to purchase a book - any book - we null help you 
get it, with no charge for the service. Make this your Department of Literary 
Consultation. 


"BOBBIE BURNS" 


HALE the charm of Bums lies in the fact that one can dare to call him "Bobbie!" Mark 
Twain once attempted to call Emerson "Ralph," and Longfellow "Henry" (or was it 
"Hen!"), but he met such a rebuff that the memory of it smarted all his life. Browning 
bore the same Christian name as Bums, but who has ever dreamed of speaking of "Bob" 
Browning ? Or who would ever refer to Browning's great colleague as "Alf ' Tennyson? 
The very mention of such familiarities makes us shiver! But it seems far more fitting to 
speak of "Bobbie" Bums than it would of "Robert" Bums. 


This, I say, is half the charm of the Scottish singer; he comes so close home to us, he 
seems so like a personal friend, that we instinctively think of him as one of our intimate 
chums. So was it with those who knew him in the flesh; to them also he was just 
"Bobbie," and to Scotchmen he ever will be nothing else. Burns was one of the most 
democratic of men. It is easy to be democratic in theory; it is often difficult to play the 
part; Bums played the part. He was himself that which he sang, and never did a man 
sing so much of the joy of friendship, the glow of fellowship, or of the appeal of 
average, undistinguished human nature. Many of his love affairs were with peasant girls 
and many of his friendships were with peasant men. 


Yet, in spite of this, it has become somewhat difficult for a twentieth century American 
to know Bums, and this for at least two reasons. For one thing, most of his poetry 
sprang up out of actual experiences, and it is often necessary to know the story of those 



experiences in order to have a clew to the poetry. For another thing, he wrote his best 
songs and poems in the Scotch dialect and this is now almost as hard to read as 
Chaucer's English. How many, for instance, would know offhand that "ilka green shaw" 
means "a wooded dell," or that a "laverock" is a "thrush" ? Bums' poems are strewn 
with these Scotticisms, most of which are as so much Greek to the majority of us. 


It is for these reasons that one may take pleasure in recommending to one's friends - all 
of whom may be presumed to be lovers of Bums' poetry - such a work as W. A. 
Neilson's "Bums: How to Know Him" (published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis, at 
$1.50). Mr. Neilson tells the story of the poet's life in such manner as to cast in relief 
the biographical experiences which throw most light on his work; and he also writes 
into the margin the English equivalent of all the Scotch expressions. Furthermore, he 
quotes nearly all the old favorites from the poems in such order as to place each one in 
its appropriate biographical context. 


This biographical context is of great importance in understanding most of the songs, for 
Bums was tmly one who "wrote from the heart." Some poets are deliberate artists; they 
sit down cold-bloodedly to build up a burnished column of verse, as Gray did in his 
"Elegy"; others are children of inspiration; they can never write anything worth while 
except when the mood is upon them; Bums was such an one. The poems which he 
wrote for special occasions, or because he chanced to consider it his duty to write 
something, are almost invariably artificial and lifeless, as one may learn from the 
various specimens of the same displayed by Mr. Neilson; but when it was a genuine 
passion that caused him to take his pen in hand he could compose such songs as never a 
poet could before him. Carlyle declared "My Nannie, O" to be the greatest song ever 
written. Carlyle was Scotch himself, and may therefore have had his bias, but others not 
Scotch have agreed with him. 


Many of the finest flowers of Bums' song grew up, it may be confessed, from a rather 
rank soil. The poet was possessed of a dangerous nature. His blood was usually at the 
boiling point, and all too frequently it boiled over. Even in his own circles he was called 
"a wild one," and the Bums worshipper is never permitted to forget that his idol had 
feet of clay. But the poet himself surpassed everybody in regret for his wildness and 
never have lines of tmer penitence been penned than are certain of his verses; he had a 
hard row to hoe both domestically and financially and allowances must be made 
accordingly even by the most puritan. 



But it may be said without exaggeration, and without making light of any of the great 
moral sanctions, that the very darkness of much of the background of Burns' poetry 
only serves to bring out in stronger relief the amazing qualities of his genius. 
Shakespeare would take over an old bloodthirsty play and transfigure it; in his genius 
an Italian tale or an old Danish drama would suffer a sea change into something rich 
and strange. The genius of Bums had the same magical power when dealing with his 
own raw experiences or misadventures. Take, as an example, that song entitled "Ae 
Fond Kiss" which contains the haunting lines, 


"Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Never met - or never parted, 

We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 


This song, and the companion song, entitled "My Nannie's Awa," sprang from a love 
affair of which Bums himself came to feel very much ashamed; nevertheless, his genius 
transformed it into a melody which will sing itself around the world while men continue 
to love poetry. 


No other singer can ever have quite the same place in the affection of Masons because 
Bums was the first great poet laureate of our Fraternity; every lodge should keep a 
volume of his poems at hand to serve as a poetical commentary on the teachings of the 
Fraternity. Those lodges which desire to build up a Bums library will receive a full list 
of Bumsiana from the Grand Lodge Library of Iowa, situated at Cedar Rapids; this 
library now possesses one of the largest collections of books on Bums and by Bums 
that can be found anywhere. 


* * * 



"THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS" 


Dreams unroll their evanescent dramas within those houses of sleep which are nearer to 
us than breathing and closer than hands and feet, yet are they often so eerie, so fantastic, 
that we wonder whether they may not belong to an order of being very remote from our 
own. They are ours, they are not ours; they borrow such substance as they have from 
our waking hours, their language is our language, their colors are such as we have seen, 
yet their figures and their motions are so fantastic that when we awaken from them into 
the actual world we feel that we have returned from some aerial voyage into a land that 
lies over the abysses of the inane. Is it any cause for wonder that men who dream every 
night of their lives are quick to forget the insubstantial phantoms? that ancient peoples 
attributed them to gods or demons? that credulous medieval folk feigned to accept them 
as prophecies from the unseen? or that the more pragmatic men of today dismiss them 
as having no significance at all ? 


This indifference with which most of us are wont to consider our dreams is not shared, 
however, by the men of science; how could they be, when it is the dearest dogma of 
science that every slightest thing, the atom of dust, the faintest nuance of feeling, has its 
value, its ray of light to throw on the ineluctable mystery of existence ? Dreams are 
normal functions of the human mind; as much a part of ourselves as our own brains; 
how can we continue to imagine that they play no part in the real business of our lives ? 


Of the scores of men of science who have undertaken to translate the rosetta stone of 
dreams, Professor Sigmund Freud is easily chief. Assisted by a band of workers he has 
analyzed thousands of dreams, and the sleepers whose visions he has studied have come 
from both sexes, from all ages, and from many walks of life. After years of such 
research he and his colleagues have something to tell us about the least understood of 
all our common experiences, and it must be worth our while to listen to these savants, 
though we cannot always understand them nor always agree with them. The story of 
these explorations into the shadowy lands will be found, unhampered by many of the 
technicalities of the specialist, in Professor Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," 
(Macmillan Co., New York, $4.00). 



Professor Freud tells us that our dreams are composed of our own experiences albeit 
these are usually, and for a good reason, disguised beyond recognition. The larger part 
of these materials are borrowed from the day immediately preceding; next in order 
come the recollections of childhood, many of which have seldomly lifted themselves 
into the waking consciousness; and lastly are those memories which drift, like flotsam 
and jetsam, over the intervening years. These may be memories of thoughts, of feelings, 
or of events. 


Oftentimes the dream will make use of some physical sensation arising from the body 
during the very moment of the fantasy. The puipose of this, so it seems, is to protect us 
against awakening. If, for instance, a member of the body is exposed to the cold the 
unpleasant sensation would arouse the sleeper did not the genius of the dream dress it 
up in some exciting drama to hold the attention and to prevent it returning to the actual 
surroundings. "In a certain sense," writes our author, “all dreams are dreams of 
convenience: they serve the puipose of continuing sleep instead of awakening. The 
dream is the guardian of sleep, not the disturber of it." 


But this guardianship of sleep is not, so Professor Freud believes, the principal function 
of the dream; he believes that in a majority of cases the dream "may be recognized as 
the fulfillment of a wish." In this simple statement the savant has presented an 
hypothesis which has revolutionized the whole subject and has caused many 
psychologists to recast their theories. As his own exposition of this idea runs through 
almost 500 pages I cannot hope to explain it in as many words, but I may be able, if due 
caution is employed, to furnish some slight hint of the matter. It is the nature of the 
mind to be incessantly desiring; it is the nature of our surroundings to thwart the larger 
number of these wishes; when a desire is thwarted it creates a tension in the mind which 
causes a feeling of uneasiness or pain; these thwarted desires, always pressing toward 
fulfillment, resort to the device of dreaming and therein find the satisfaction denied 
them in the actual world. Were our unfulfilled wishes always accumulating their tension 
the nervous system would at last be shattered by the strain; dreaming is nothing other 
than the mechanism whereby the mind finds relief, illusory but sufficient, and thereby 
frees itself of its otherwise intolerable tension. 


Some may object to this by saying that their dreams are the last things that they would 
wish, so terrible are they, oftentimes. Professor Freud's explanation of this is one of the 
most ingenius features of his argument. He says that many of our wishes are such as we 



would not even acknowledge to ourselves and that therefore to present themselves 
before the mind they must disguise themselves. When John of Patmos wrote his 
Revelation, the last book in our bible, he had a few simple things to say, but these 
things were distasteful to the Roman authorities; to get his book past the censors he 
composed it in allegorical fashion; the quickest-witted Roman could not discern behind 
the phantasmagoria of the book the message which it carried to the initiated. Professor 
Freud contends that a similar process goes on in our dreaming, and the mental process 
which throws its strange disguises about a dream he calls "the censor complexes," 
thereby using the very phraseology of our illustration. A very terrible dream may thus 
prove after all to be the disguised fulfillment of a wish. 


In its habits of disguise the dream faculty uses certain symbolisms and these are 
employed many times over, by all persons, just as writers repeat the same figures of 
speech; by studying and comparing thousands of dreams Professor Freud and his 
helpers have placed in our hands a key to the language of our visions. Equipped with 
this, and with a modicum of patience and curiosity, we can leam to interpret our own 
dreams. He who undertakes this will be suiprised to leam how simple are many of the 
most gigantic grotesqueries; he will leam nothing of any world outside the real world; 
he will receive no messages from gods or ghosts; but he will leam many things about 
himself which may prove a surprise. Did space permit I might describe such instances 
of self-revelation, and I might indicate certain practical uses of dream analysis, 
especially in way of the diagnosis and the cure of a few diseases; as it is I must refer the 
reader to the fascinating pages of Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." 


This book is of considerable interest to Masons because it tends to throw light on the 
origin of ancient and universal symbols. Freud holds that, as the sex impulse is one of 
the strongest in human nature, a great many dreams are disguised sex wishes or resumes 
of secret sex experiences. Also, he has discovered that the dream faculty makes uses of 
the same sex symbols over and over again, and these symbols, so he holds, are identical 
with many of the symbols used by secret societies and religions from the dawn of 
history. Many of our Masonic scholars, and they the sanest, have always held that 
certain of our emblems and symbols, the pillars for example, originally had a sex 
origin; to those who care to pursue such studies Professor Freud's work will be most 
illuminating. 





THE QUESTION BOX 


THE BUILDER is an open forum for free and fraternal discussion. Each of its 
contributors writes under his own name, and is responsible for his own opinions. 
Believing that a unity of spirit is better than a uniformity of opinion, the Research 
Society, as such, does not champion any one school of Masonic thought as over against 
another; but offers to all alike a medium for fellowship and instruction, leaving each to 
stand or fall by its own merits. 


The Question Box and Correspondence Column are open to all members of the Society 
at all times. Questions of any nature on Masonic subjects are earnestly invited from our 
members, particularly those connected with Lodges or Study Clubs which are following 
our "Bulletin Course of Masonic Study." When requested, questions will be answered 
promptly by mail before publication in this department. 


"REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR" 


Can you put me on the track of some reliable exposition of Ecclesiasties 12:1-7? It 
sounds beautiful in recitation, but largely meaningless. As chaplain of Norwood Lodge, 
No. 1 19, in the Grand Registry of Manitoba I am especially interested as it falls to me 
to recite the passage in "raising." "Let there be light." L.F., Manitoba. 


Good for you, Brother Fraser! The bane of Masonry is the constant repetition of the 
ritual by men who never make an attempt to discover the meaning of what they are 
saying. 


The sacred sentences which fall on the ears of the candidate as he makes his mystic 
round are so heavy with poignant beauty that one hesitates to intrude the harsh language 



of prose upon such strains of poetry, solemn sweet. We may well believe that the men 
who introduced the reading here had no other thought than that the words might the 
better create an atmosphere in which the coming drama of hate and doom might all the 
more impressively come home to the heart of the participants. If such was their purpose 
neither Shakespeare nor Dante could have found words or sentiments more appropriate 
to the hour. There is a music and majesty in the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes which 
leaves us dumb with awe and wonder and our hearts open to the impressions of a 
tragedy alongside which the doom of Lear seems insignificant and vain. 


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


It had been a day of wind and cloud and rain; but the clouds did not, as was usual, 
disperse after the shower. They returned again and covered the heavens with their 
blackness. Thunderstorms were so uncommon in Palestine that they always inspired 
fear and dread, as many a paragraph in the Scriptures will testify. As the storm broke 
the strong men guarding the gates of rich men's houses began to tremble; the hum of the 
little mills where the women were always grinding at even time suddenly 


* For this version see the article by Bro. Wm. F. Kuhn, "When the Almond Tree 
Blossoms," THE BUILDER, vol. I, p. 138. 



ceased because the grinders were frightened from their toil; the women, imprisoned in 
the harems, who had been gazing out of the lattice to watch the activities of the streets, 
drew back into their dark rooms; even the revelers, who had been sitting about their 
tables through the afternoon, eating dainties and sipping wine, lost their appetites, and 
many were made so nervous that the sudden twitting of a bird would cause them to start 
with anxious surprise. 


As the terror of the storm, the poet goes on to say, so is the coming of death, when man 
"goes to his home of everlasting and mourners go about the streets." Whatever men 
may have been, good or bad, death brings equal terror to all. A man may have been 
rich, like the golden lamp hung on a silver chain in the palace of a king; he may have 
been as poor as the earthen pitcher in which maidens carried water from the public well, 
or even as crude as the heavy wooden wheel wherewith they drew the water; what his 
state was matters not, death is as dread a calamity to the one as to the other. When that 
dark adventure comes the fine possessions in which men had sought security will be 
vain to stay the awful passing into night. "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." The one 
bulwark against the common calamity, the Preacher urges, is to remember the Creator, 
yea, to remember Him from youth to old age; to believe that one goes to stand before 
Him is the one and only solace in an hour when everything falls to ruin and the very 
desire to live has been quenched by the ravages of age and the coming of death. 


* * * 


SOLOMON’S TEMPLE AND EARLY HISTORY OF MASONRY 


Will you kindly enlighten me on the following questions: 


1 . Is there any Masonic history before the establishment of the first Grand Lodge in 
England on June 24, 1717 ? 



2. If there is not, whom is the Widow's Son supposed to represent ? 


3. What connection is there between Masonry as we know it today, and the building of 
King Solomon's Temple ? In other words, was the Temple built by the Freemasons? 


4. Is the Temple of Solomon described in Jewish history as a very common building, 
124 feet long by 65 feet wide, and 52 feet high, built of square blocks of stone, 
supposed to be the same as the one described in the lecture of the Entered Apprentice 
degree? If so, why such a difference? 

C.N.R., Nevada. 


1. Yes, June 24, 1717, is not the beginning of Masonic history; it is hard to tell where 
the legend ceases and history begins. We have no means of knowing how old Masonry 
is, but we do know that it existed long before the formation of the Grand Lodge in 
1717. For instance, Elias Ashmole in his diary, under date of October 16, 1646, says 
that he was made a Freemason at Warrington. He also gives the names of those "who 
were at the lodge," and his mention of the institution is in the casual manner in which 
you would speak of it at the present date, as though it were so well known that it was 
not necessary to explain what the Society of Freemasons is. 


In a churchyard in London an old tombstone bears the inscription: "Here lieth the body 
of Wm. Kerwin, of this city of London, a Freemason who departed this life the 26th day 
of December Ano 1594." 


There are lodge records and also other evidence to prove that Freemasonry existed prior 
to 1717. These are but samples of several records similar in nature which indicate that 
Masonry existed long before 1717. 



2. All the history we have in regard to Hiram is found in the Bible (see I Kings 7:13-14) 
and the works of Josephus. Most of what we are told about him means that we have no 
way of proving that it is historical. 


3. Whether or not Solomon's Temple was built by Freemasons we have no way of 
determining. We know that there were societies of architects at Tyre, and that Hiram, 
King of Tyre, sent workmen to King Solomon. There is no doubt that the Society of 
Dionysiac Architects resembled the Society of Freemasons very closely, but we have 
no positive proof of an identity between them. 


4. Yes, the Temple of King Solomon is the one on which our Masonic symbolism is 
based, but I must remind you that neither biblical nor secular history speaks of King 
Solomon's Temple as a common building. It is always referred to as a very magnificent 
structure. In calling it a very common building we presume that you refer only to the 
size, and that you are contrasting that with the reference to its stupendous magnitude in 
the Entered Apprentice lecture. The same size applies only to the main body of the 
Temple. The outer court had enormous and magnificent terraces, spacious courts, and 
the whole structure was at least one-half mile in circumference. The Temple itself was 
but a very small part of the entire edifice. 


* * * 


WHO WILL HELP THIS LODGE TO BUILD UP A LIBRARY? 


As we are starting a library in connection with our lodge and study club, I have been 
wondering whether some of our American brothers have any Masonic literature to 
spare. If so, it would be very gratefully received by the brethren in these distant parts. I 
would personally acknowledge anything that may be sent. - Robert W. Stiles, Sec'y 
Victory Lodge No. 40, Nelson, New Zealand. 



This is the kind of query we like to receive; it shows that the New Zealand brethren are 
alive; when a lodge has both a library and study club that lodge is in good health. We 
are leaving our readers to answer this question; if you have any volumes or papers or 
journals that aren't doing business with you. send them over to Brother Stiles. 


* * * 


AID AND ASSISTANCE FROM ENEMY MASONS IN THE WAR 


Can you give or refer me to any incidents in the present war where enemy Masons have 
aided each other when found in difficult places? Or (and I hesitate to ask the question) 
have you heard of instances where enemy Masons have forgotten their obligations? The 
term "enemy" is used to imply that Masons are in opposing armies. C.V.H., California. 


We cannot refer to any such instances though there have doubtless been many such 
cases, as was true of the Civil War, when the Blue and the Gray sometimes forgot their 
enmities and met fraternally beneath the square and compass. Can any reader cite such 
instances from his observation, hearsay, or reading? 


Your second question doesn't quite "get across to us"; do you mean their Masonic 
obligations, using the word in its general sense; or do you mean the obligation taken at 
the altar; or do you mean a Mason's obligations to society at large ? It is a temptation to 
charge the German Masons with violation of their obligations in all senses, especially in 
breaking relations with the English Grand Lodge at a time when the latter was willing, 
and even eager, to maintain relations, and in the invasion of Belgium - one of the most 
un-Masonic acts in history - but it must be remembered that the German overlords 
maintain control of everything in their empire, lodges as well as all else, and that the 
Masons have been as much robbed of their rights of "self direction" as any other group 
in Germany. If German autocracy were to turn out victorious in this struggle, Masons 
the world over would be placed under a system of espionage as they have been in the 
Fatherland: how would Masons enjoy that? Yet there are Masons here and there who 
say that Masonry has no stake in the war and that we are not under obligations, as 



Masons, to help whip the Kaiser! Water and fire are not more opposite than Masonry 
and Kaiserism! 


* * * 


NO PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF MASONRY IN RHODE ISLAND IN THE 
17th CENTURY 


The following is the first paragraph of an article entitled "The Jew in Masonry," 
appearing in the December number of the "Masonic Journal of South Africa," and there 
quoted as taken from the "Masonic Voice Review": 


"Mr. Madison C. Peters, of New York, quotes from the Rev. Edward Peterson's History 
of Rhode Island to show that in 1658 some Jews from Holland established a Masonic 
lodge in Newport which continued to meet in the house of Brother Campanall until 


1842. 


"Peterson quotes Past Grand Master Gould, of Massachusetts, who asserted that in 1839 
certain papers found among the effects of a deceased relative who was a great-great- 
grand-daughter of Gov. John Wanton of Rhode Island, 1734-1740, one of which 
contained this item: 


" 'That ye (day and month obliterated) 165 - (either 6 or 8) wee (sic) met at y house of 
Mordecai Campunall and after Synagog we gave Abm Moses the degree of Maconrie.' 

tf 


The remainder of the article goes on to later dates, which give rise to no question, but 
the last three lines quoted prompt a query as to whether you or any of your readers can 
say whether any investigation has been made concerning a seventeenth century meeting 



in America, founded on previous meetings in Holland, where Masonry has hitherto 
been supposed to have made its first appearance some years after the foundation of the 
Grand Lodge of England. O.H.B., England. 


We asked Brother Melvin M. Johnson, Past Grand Master of Massachusetts, if he could 
throw any light on the foregoing subject and received the following reply: 


I can throw all the light on the subject that there is to throw on it. The fact is that the 
assertions made with regard to the Rhode Island document in question will not bear 
having any light thrown on them. 


On page 111 of THE BUILDER for May, 1915, you will find a comment on this same 
subject matter and you will find the evidence carefully reviewed in the Printed 
Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts for 1870, pages 357 to 361, 
inclusive. See also my "Freemasonry in America Prior to 1750," published by the 
National Masonic Research Society, page 20. 


The fairy tale that certain Hebrews were given the degrees of Masonry at Newport, 
Rhode Island, in 1656 and 1658, grew out of a statement published in 1853 by Rev. 
Edward Peterson, on page 101 of his "History of Rhode Island and Newport in the 
Past," and quoted by J. L. Gould, of Connecticut, in 1868 in a manual entitled "Guide to 
the Chapter." Mr. Peterson says that his statement was "taken from documents now in 
possession of N.H. Gould, Esq." 


Brother N. H. Gould was a 33d Mason. In 1870 he wrote a letter in which he says that 
in January, 1839, Hannah Hull, a distant relative of his, died leaving some papers. She 
was a great-great-grand-daughter of Governor John Wanton who was Governor of the 
Colony from 1734 to 1740. Brother N.H. Gould says that his father settled her estate 
and in looking over her effects they found in an old trunk some letters. Among them, he 
says, was a memorandum which read: 



"Ths ye (day and month obliterated) 1656 or 8 (not certain which, as the place was 
stained and broken: the first three figures were plain) wee mett att y House off 
Mordecai Campunnall and affter Synagog wee gave Abm Moses the degree of 
Maconrie." 


Brother Gould added that the document was "nicely enveloped and packed away, with 
some of my papers in my house, securely, but not where I can at present put my hand 
upon it." 


The document has never been seen since, although Bro. Gould, while he lived, was 
applied to time and time again by historians including M. W. William Sewall Gardner, 
Grand Master of Massachusetts, and Wor. Brother William James Hughan, but he never 
produced it or permitted any one to see it if he ever had such a document at all. 


Unless and until the document is produced or accounted for, no credit whatever can be 
given it. Indeed, no credit is given it in Rhode Island. 


M.W. Thomas A. Doyle, who was then Grand Master of Masons in Rhode Island, in 
December, 1870, wrote to the Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts a letter 
reading as follows: 


"Providence, December, 1870. 


"Dear Sir and M. W. Brother: 


"As to the statement, in Peterson's History of Rhode Island, that Masonry was worked 
in this State from 1658 to 1742, 1 can only say that, from the best information I can 
obtain in regard to that history, the statement is not to be taken as a fact, unless 
supported by other reliable testimony. What he has said about Masonry is, I understand, 



asserted upon the authority of documents in the possession of W. Br. N.H. Gould. I 
have made many enquiries about these documents of brethren in Newport, members of 
the Grand Lodge and others, and do not find that any one has ever seen them; neither do 
the brethren believe that any proof exists of the truth of Peterson's statement. 


"From Brother Gould's letter to you, it would seem that the only authority in his 
possession, for the assertion of Peterson, is a document showing that, in 1656 or 1658, 
somebody met some other persons at some house in Newport, and gave 'Abm. Moses 
the degrees of Maconrie.' 


"This may have occurred * then and there just as it is stated; but, if so, it is no authority 
for the statement that a lodge of Masons existed then in Newport, or that there was any 
legal Masonic authority for the work done, or that any other person was ever legally 
made a Mason in Newport, between 1658 and 1742. 


"My own opinion is, that the first lawful lodge of Masons ever convened in this 
jurisdiction, was the one which met in Newport, in 1749, under the authority of R. W. 
Thomas Oxnard, Provincial Grand Master of Massachusetts, which lodge has existed 
since that time, and is now known as Saint John's Lodge. 


"Yours truly and fraternally, 

Thomas A. Doyle, 

Grand Master of Masons in Rhode Island. 


"M.W. William S. Gardner, 


Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts." 



One of the hardest animals to kill is a snake. It is even harder to kill a false statement 
which is made as real historical fact. This canard with regard to 1656 has been copied 
by one writer after another. Most of those who have given it any credit whatever have 
been the kind of historians who are doing the Masonry the most harm - historians who 
are willing to give the credit of their names to wild and unreliable statements so long as 
they have the flavor of antiquity. 


The late Brother Robert Freke Gould founded a new era in the writing of Masonic 
history and it will be much to our advantage if we follow his lead and do not assert facts 
as historical until the evidence therefor has been examined and found worthy of 
approval. 


* Impossible. There were no degrees in Masonry until 1719. Whoever concocted the 
story about this document forgot that. - M.M.J. 




CORRESPONDENCE 


EXPLORATION OF THE HOLY LAND 


I want to make a suggestion, but perhaps the matter has already had consideration. 
Doubtless when the present war is over there will be some geographical changes made 
in the earth's surface; possibly we all have ideas of what they should be. I should like to 
see Armenia given to the Armenians, and Jerusalem given to the Jews. There is much to 
be found out concerning the Holy Land and Jerusalem of historic value to the world. 
The exploring and examination of ancient and venerable places should be done by our 



Research Society, possibly combined with the National Geographic Society and 
institutions of like kind in England and France, but under license of a Jewish 
government. There are many Jews in both of our Societies, and no doubt a happy 
combination could easily be formed. 


There are at present in the world sufficient miracle-working bones, parts of the true 
cross, and what not, without any more being unearthed. It is my opinion that whatever 
may be found in that land should be found by honest people, and if put anywhere for 
exhibition, should be placed in public museums and on exhibition at all times and not to 
be worshipped and expected to work miracles. 


B. F. Bache, Florida. 


* * * 


NAMES OF CANDIDATES IN FODGE NOTICES 


Permit me this attempt to answer Brother C.H.S. of Connecticut. For several years my 
own lodge has followed the practice of reporting to our membership the names and 
addresses of all applicants for the degrees and for affiliation, there being no prohibition 
in this Grand Jurisdiction. 


We do it because it adds nothing to the expense of the notices which are sent out for 
each meeting and because it is manifestly impossible for every resident member to 
attend every meeting, much as we should like to have them do so, and we believe they 
are entitled to the protection afforded by such notice. It is not possible for one man, or 
two, to know all there is to be known about another. Even our investigating committees 
of three, newly appointed for each applicant, do not get all the facts the lodge should 
have upon which to base a judgment as to the qualifications of the applicant to be made 
a Mason. Instances are very numerous of favorable reports by such committees 



following the favorable recommendation of two brothers, which comes with the 
application, and all followed by a ballot which is "dark." 


In his address before the last Annual Communication of the Grand Lodge of Minnesota, 
our Grand Master cited one instance which I commend to Brother C.H.S. for his careful 
perusal and if he declares it an exceptional case and not to be relied on for a rule, I 
would remind him that he also has cited but a single case and it is even less of a 
"precedent" or reason for a rule barring the giving of these notices than the one which 
our Grand Master used to point out his plea for still more care in the investigating of 
applicants. In our Grand Master's case the facts were within the knowledge of only one 
man, and if he had been unavoidably absent, and so unable to stop the applicant, what a 
dreadful situation would have resulted! 


I think there are therefore twosreasons why these names should be published in advance 
to all the members. First, that if any doubt exists it must be resolved in favor of the 
lodge, and not the applicant, and second, that every brother now in the lodge must be 
made to feel that he is to be protected against the possibility of having to assume 
Masonic responsibility for one he knows to be unworthy. 


Doubt does exist as to every applicant. If not, why investigate? And if we do 
investigate, why not be thorough and use every possible channel of investigation? No 
man goes about spreading his knowledge of another's character, but if that other is to be 
made his Masonic brother he must be made acquainted with that fact. If not, then we 
have failed in our responsibility to him. 


It is unfortunately true that one may not safely rely upon the fact that another is a 
Mason. It is needless to say that this should not be so. The reason is in the lack of 
thorough investigation, it will be said, but I reply that none can read the mind of another 
if he choose to hide it, and I know at least one instance where three investigations (two 
of which followed the first rejection) failed to disclose any reason and yet some one 
knew, because two other rejections followed. 



If the applicant is worthy, he will be admitted. If he is not, within the knowledge of 
even one unknown brother, the lodge should not want him so badly as to prefer that one 
unknown brother shall not have every possible chance to express his opinion at the 
ballot-box, and remain unknown. 


I insist upon assuming the good faith of the brother who is "in" rather than relying upon 
the qualifications of the applicant whom I may not know. 


William Burrows, Minnesota. 


* * * 


ORIGIN OF THE GRAND LODGE OF CUBA 


May I obtain from you the insertion in THE BUILDER of the following correction to 
Brother Johnson's and Odell's article on the recognition of the Grand Lodge of Panama? 
I have corresponded with M. W. Brother Johnson and he accepts my correction and 
indicated that it could be published. I cannot but still congratulate the Society for the 
excellence of the article. The correction follows: 


It is said in the article that the Grand Lodge of Cuba was started by the Supreme 
Council, A. and A.S.R. This is an error, as it was constituted on the fifth of December, 
1859, and the Supreme Council was constituted on the twenty- seventh of the same 
month. The Grand Lodge was composed of three lodges, two of them holding original 
charters from Pennsylvania and one from South Carolina, puiposely chartered for that 
end. 



It is true that sometime afterward some relations existed between the Grand Lodge and 
the Supreme Council, but these relations had no restraint upon the independence of the 
Grand Lodge, and lasted but a short time. 


F. de P. Rodriguez, 

Chairman Committee on Foreign Correspondence 
of the Grand Lodge of Cuba. 


* * * 


VIRGINIA MILITARY MASONIC CLUB 


Brother C. F. Bushman, Virginia, sends us the following item written for the Virginia 
Masonic Journal which should prove interesting to the readers of THE BUILDER: 


At a meeting composed of officers and enlisted men of the 315th Field Artillery, 
National Army, at Camp Lee, Va., February 6th, 1918, all of whom were Master 
Masons, it was suggester by Lieutenant Colonel Russell P. Reeder, the Commander of 
the Regiment, that we form a Masonic Club, and that we attend the Grand Lodge the 
following week at Richmond, Va., for the puipose of gaining recognition from that 
august body. 


On February 12th, the Master Masons of this Regiment attended in a body the Grand 
Lodge of Virginia, then in session at Richmond, where we were welcomed with much 
feeling and pleasure, and were granted permission to organize a Masonic Club, for 
social puiposes only. 



This having been accomplished, the Club was organized and the following officers 
elected: 

Worshipful Master Sergeant Major C. F. Bushman 

Senior Warden Sergeant B. F. Hatton 

Junior Warden Sergeant R. A. Lampton 

Treasurer Private Lacey Cole 

Secretary Sergeant R. H. Counts 

Senior Deacon Sergeant James H. Petty 

Junior Deacon Private H. J. Lilly 
Tiler Corporal William E. Kirk 

The Club, at present, has a membership of fifty Masons. 


At a meeting held on March 6th, the Club was honored by the presence of Dr. Joseph 
W. Eggleston, Past Grand Master of Virginia, and Major W. McK. Evans, both of 
whom served as artillerymen in the Civil War, and who were elected Honorary 
members. During his visit, Dr. Eggleston delivered a very strong and interesting talk, 
choosing as his subject "Masonry and the War," which proved very beneficial to us and 
was much appreciated by all. 


The name of our club was selected in honor of our Regimental Commander, Lieutenant 
Colonel Russell P. Reeder, and Dr. Joseph W. Eggleston, but for whose kind interest 
and co-operation it would have been impossible for the club to have attained its present 
well established condition. 


The club was organized for social and benevolent puiposes only, and as a means 
whereby the Masons of this, as well as other Regiments in the cantonment, may 



assemble together and get better acquainted. At the present time it is the only 
organization of its kind in the Division. 


* * * 


DEPUTY FOR CHINA - A CORRECTION 


In the March issue we gave the title of Brother Charles S. Lobingier, who wrote the 
interesting article "Freemasons in the American Revolution," as "Deputy for China." 
While Brother Lobingier is a resident of Shanghai, China, he is not the Supreme 
Council Deputy for that country but for the Philippines. The Deputy for China is 
Brother John R. Hykes. 




AN ACROSTIC 


Always and ever I cherish thee still 
My home and the land of my birth. 

Each mountain, valley, river and plain 
Rises to view, the fairest on earth. 

I ever will serve and support the 
Country whose name, by the letters you see 
Are first in each line, the home of the free. 



- W.S. Vawter. Texas.