The Builder Magazine 

May 1928 - Volume XIV - Number 5 


The Ark of the Covenant With Israel 

BY BURTON E. BENNETT, Washington 

THE Ark of the Covenant with Israel of the Old Testament plays a leading part in 
the Chapter and Council degrees. It is also known as the Ark of the Testimony and 
the Ark of the Revelation. It is called in the Chapter and Council systems of our 
American Rite the "Substitute Ark." 


The Chapter consists of four degrees, Mark Master, Past Master, Most Excellent 
Master and Royal Arch. The Council has two degrees, Royal Master and Select 
Master. The story of the making of these degrees is a long one and only a short 
sketch can be given here. The Royal Arch was manufactured first. It originated in 
France, passed over to England where it was amplified and then came here. It 
ruined the soul of Ancient Masonry and made it commonplace by finding that for 
which it should have forever striven. The other degrees were mostly made in 
America, probably by Webb. All were put into form here. The Council degrees 
were claimed by the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite until 1870, when it 
released all control over them. All of these nine degrees tell further about Solomon 
and his Temple. The Ark, or Substitute Ark, as it is called in these degrees, 
occupies such a prominent position that it is well for Masons to know, to some 
extent, the true history of the Ark of the Bible. 


The Ark was a chest made of acacia wood. It was about three feet nine inches long, 
two feet three inches wide and two feet nine inches deep. It was covered without 
and within with gold. Two golden rings were placed on each side of the Ark 
through which were passed poles of acacia wood by which the Ark was borne. It 
was carried by two men, one in front and one behind. The top of the Ark was 
covered with a gold slab on which were two cherubim. 



The Ark was carried by the Levites. This class performed all religious functions. 
The true priests were descended from Aaron. The other Levites did the menial 
tasks. The Levites as a whole were descended from Jacob by his wife, Leah, 
through their son Levi. Later when the Jewish religion had become firmly 
established, and the Temple built at Jerusalem, all altar services were performed by 
the Aaronite priesthood. The other Levites, who were really servants, were not 
allowed to approach the altar. An ordinary person doing so was subject to the death 
penalty. 


When the Israelites had a first real sacred and religious Ark the abode of their great 
God Yahweh cannot, of course, be determined. It was, probably, after they had 
settled in South Palestine. Yahweh was their great God, their war God. His abode 
was in the venerated Ark. With it came victory; without it came defeat. Tradition 
connects the Ark with Moses and the Exodus. It was by no means the only holy 
thing upon which the Israelites relied in their joumeyings and final subjugation of 
the promised land. Probably it was at first the protector of the two tribes of Joseph, 
Ephraim and Manasseh. It appears in the beginning not to have been the protector 
of all Israel, but only of the tribes that first came to Judah. The Ark was not always 
with them. Sometimes it was taken from them. Long periods of time pass without 
any mention of it. Sometimes it was not even considered ancient. But it was the 
abode of their great God Yahweh, continued with them during the conquest of 
Palestine (perhaps sometimes in memory only), and finally became lodged in the 
Temple that Solomon built at Jerusalem. 


THE SETTLEMENT IN EGYPT 


The Bible tells a story about Jacob and his family in Palestine. According to it, one 
of his sons, named Joseph, was sold by the other sons to Arab traders, who took 
him to Egypt and sold him there. He attracted the attention of some government 
official, became a government official himself, and finally rose high in the service. 
He even became the king's chief adviser. Due to a famine in Palestine, Jacob sent 
his sons to buy wheat in Egypt. Joseph recognized his brothers, made himself 
known to them, and advised them to come, with the whole family, to Egypt. The 



migration was made with Jacob at the head. Joseph obtained a grant of land for his 
kin in Goshen, and here they settled. Jacob's other name was Israel, and from him 
the twelve tribes of Israel were descended. They grew from a family to a people 
and lived in Egypt some four hundred years. Another version says two hundred 
and fifteen years. The accepted story is that they were persecuted by the Egyptians 
and escaped under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. It is certain that on account 
of dynastic changes in Egypt the government turned against them, but whether they 
escaped, or were driven out of Egypt, is uncertain. Egyptian chronicles of about 
this time tell of some slaves escaping over the border. But there is no knowing 
whether this referred to the Israelites. The Israelites returned to Palestine, 
reconquered the land of their fathers, established a kingdom first with Saul and 
then with David at its head. All this was done during a period of some three 
hundred to four hundred years. This kingdom is said to have arisen to great 
magnificence under Solomon, the son of King David. 


The journey from Palestine to Egypt is an easy one, and it is just as easy to return. 
The Israelites were a small family when the famine began; Egypt was a mighty 
kingdom. For centuries, even before Abraham is said to have wandered into 
Palestine with his people and his flocks from Babylonia, it had dominated 
Palestine. Its princes were subject to the mighty power of Egypt. 


EGYPTIAN RECORDS SILENT REGARDING HEBREWS 


Egyptian monuments do not mention the Israelites, and Egyptian civilization 
appears to have made no impression on them. It is reasonable to suppose, however, 
that one member of a family in Palestine was sold as a slave in Egypt, rose to high 
power there, and his people came there and he provided well for them; that in time 
they greatly increased and remembered dimly the circumstances of their coming; 
that on account of governmental changes in Egypt they were so harassed that they 
were glad to get out; that they returned to the country where their ancestors had 
lived hundreds of years before, and on account of better knowledge acquired from 
Egypt finally conquered the people that remained and founded a united kingdom. 



The two great characters in this Israelitish-Egyptian story as related in the Bible 
are, of course, Joseph and Moses. Joseph was a practical man, a financier 
comparable to our great captains of industry, combined with a genius for 
government. Moses was a practical man, too, a born leader of men, a prophet. 
Joseph lived in the 17th century B.C., Moses in the 13th century B.C. 


Joseph was a younger son beloved both by his father and mother. They made for 
him a coat of many colors. His brothers envied him. They determined to get rid of 
him. They sold him, as we have mentioned before, to slave traders going into 
Egypt. The traders saw that he was not a common youth, held him for a high price, 
and sold him to one of the great men of the Egyptians. He was no ordinary slave. 

He must have had an engaging personality, combined with high intelligence. This 
is shown by the episode of Potiphar's wife. This story becomes more complicated 
when we consider that Potiphar was, probably, a eunuch. Egypt at this time was 
one of the largest empires in the world and possessed a civilization that ranks with 
the great ones of any time. Born in a poor country, among poor people, stolen from 
home while young, thrown as a slave into the midst of a rich and cultured people of 
a mighty empire and finally to rise to be the premier of its autocratic king, Joseph 
became one of the immortals of ancient history. 


Moses was different from Joseph, not so human, not so lovable; more of a prophet, 
a mediator for the finite with the infinite. But he is so bound up with myths and 
legends that we know very little about his true life and character. He is changed 
into a hero almost as mythical as Hercules. The story of his birth and rise is only a 
tale told of many ancient heroes. The name "Moses" means "boy," or "infant." This 
shows that he was not considered of enough importance to have a real name, or 
was a foundling. But he possessed a mighty soul, a great intellect. He became the 
leader and lawgiver of his people, and is easily the outstanding figure before the 
Christian era. 


THE ARE AS THE ABODE OF YAHWEH 



The Ark was the protector of the Josephine tribes. It does not seem at first to have 
belonged to all Israel. Possibly different portions of Israel had their own Ark. It is 
only after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar that we get detailed 
descriptions of it. By this time it had become lost and was never recorded. The 
post-exilic story is that it came with the Josephites out of Egypt and remained with 
them until deposited in the Temple at Jerusalem. It became merged in the Temple. 
The God of Israel that had heretofore dwelt in the Ark dwelt thereafter in the 
Temple, and thenceforth little attention was paid to the Ark. Whether it was 
destroyed by the Egyptians, when they invaded Palestine and took Jerusalem, or 
during some of the civil wars, or by the Babylonians when the sacked Jerusalem, is 
not known. During the Babylonish Captivity the Israelites became a different 
people, more refined, more civilized, more spiritual. Their religion was placed on a 
vastly higher plane. How much of this is to be attributed to Babylonian culture and 
knowledge is uncertain. So spiritual did the Hebrew religion become in later times 
that it was sung that the venerated Ark had been raised into heaven to remain until 
it was brought back to Earth by the Messiah. 


That the Ark was the abode of Yahweh; that when moved He came out of it to 
direct the Israelites; that in war He fought their enemies and defeated them, and 
when they rested He returned to it, is certain. By this it can be seen that He was a 
spiritual being. But in the Ark there must have been some symbol of Yahweh, their 
mighty God. The question is, what was it ? There have been advanced many 
different views as to what the Ark really contained. Scholars have widely differed. 
Some claim that it was only an empty box, blessed by the priests and carried by the 
priestly class who proclaimed to the people that in it was their great God, Y ahweh. 
Others maintain that serpent worship was still a part of their religion and that the 
Ark contained sacred serpents. It has been argued that as the original abode of 
Yahweh was on Mount Sinai the Ark contained some meteoric stones obtained 
there. The accepted view, however, is that it contained the tables upon which were 
engraved the laws of Moses, known as the Decalogue. Therefore it is meet for us to 
know what the Decalogue really is. The story is that it was first written by God 
upon two stone tables which were broken and that then Moses had it carved upon 
two new stones and put into the Ark. The Decalogue is, of course, the Ten 
Commandments. It is stated that God gave the Commandments to the Israelites at 
Mount Sinai so that all the people heard them. There are two statements about this 
in the Bible that contradict each other. Critical Bible scholars agree that the Ten 
Commandments, in their present form, date from some five hundred years after the 
time of Moses. Image worship continued in Israel long after Moses' time, and one 



of his descendants was an idolatrous priest. David, even, had images in his house, 
and in some parts of Israel image worship was established by law. Moses himself 
made a serpent of brass which was worshipped from the time of the Exodus until 
David established his capital at Jerusalem and continued to be worshipped there 
until at least 700 B. C. If Moses did prohibit image worship the prohibition was not 
very effective. In a short article like this we can only make the statement that the 
Commandments do not seem to fit in with the time and surroundings of Moses. 
They reach to many different times, and many different peoples, and many 
different sources, before and after Moses. 


The most reasonable and satisfying explanation as to what the Ark contained is that 
in it were the bones of Joseph. In Egypt Joseph said that he wanted to be buried in 
his boyhood home, where his father and other relatives were buried. When the 
Israelites, or Jacobites, left Egypt under the direction of Moses and Aaron it is 
almost inconceivable that the bones of Joseph should be left behind. With the 
passing of the centuries the fame of Joseph had grown. He had become a god to 
Israel. Why should not the Ark be built, and in it placed his bones ? The gods of 
the Egyptians must have been detested by the persecutions that the Israelites had 
received for years before the Exodus. Before coming to Egypt they had many gods. 
Even each family had its god. Whatever religious ideas Abraham had brought with 
him from Babylonia had been forgotten, or at least so distorted as to be 
unrecognizable. The long centuries in Egypt had wrought great changes. Perhaps 
they still continued to have their personal and household gods as their kindred still 
had in Palestine, but it seems certain that they had one great and mysterious God 
that outranked all and whom all worshipped. It is highly probable that they had 
spiritualized Joseph into their great God, Yahweh, whose symbol was his bones. 
This may not fully have become true until after their return to Palestine, and 
perhaps it took a long period of time to reach the sublimity of a god. It must be 
admitted that if the bones of Joseph were in the Ark they would be highly 
venerated; in war that they would be carefully protected, and in such protection 
defeat would often be turned into victory, and finally that the Ark and his bones 
would be revered. It is but a step from reverence and veneration to worship. The 
children of Israel possessed but one Joseph when worship came, how could they 
have but one God ? Ancestor worship is the easiest kind of worship. 



The myths and mysteries and legends of the past are slowly being dissipated by the 
searchlight of science and reason. Mankind must not lose Abraham, Joseph, 

Moses, David or Solomon, or the other great figures of the Bible, but it has a right 
to know as much truth about them as advancing scholarship and intellect can 
uncover. 


NOTE 


The article by Bro. Parker in THE BUILDER for 1926, page 45, may usefully be 
read in conjunction with this. Also the very valuable monograph by Prof. Arnold, 
The Ephod and Ark, upon which Bro. Parker based the interesting hypothesis that 
the Ark of the Covenant was a class of sacred objects and not unique as the Old 
Testament narrative in its present form would make it appear. [Ed.] 


— o — 


The Degrees of Masonry; Their Origin and History 


By BROS. A. L. KRESS AND R. J. MEEKREN (All rights reserved) 


EVERY Mason has learned a traditional account of the various grades of Craft 
Masonry, and this term may be stretched to include more than the three degrees of 
the "Blue" or "Symbolic" Lodge, in especial the degrees of the Chapter and the 
Council. Aside from the fact that to an educated and intelligent man these legends 
bear on their face the stamp of the purely mythical, every Masonic student has 
inevitably become aware in the course of his reading that there have been definite 
theories advanced as to their origin, the more drastic of which practically denudes 
them, and by implication the Masonic ritual also, of any real antiquity at all. 



It is perhaps rather curious that, though there have been a good many articles in 
THE BUILDER upon the general subject of the degrees, and some dealing with the 
origins of the Third, or Master Mason's Degree, yet there has been practically 
nothing about their origin as a system, although a good deal in regard to this has by 
many contributors been taken for granted. It had to be taken for granted, because to 
enter upon the subject as a whole would have led them too far afield. Yet the 
difficulty remained for most of their readers to obtain an adequate idea of the status 
of the problem. A very real difficulty, for the information is scattered through a 
large number of books and periodicals, many of them very scarce and hardly to be 
obtained in the ordinary way, except by chance. It is partly on account of this 
inaccessibility of the sources of information that it has happened that not a few 
painstaking and scholarly writers have been themselves led astray through lack of 
complete information. 


There are two works that are, however, readily available which contain 
dissertations upon our subject: Mackey's History of Freemasonry and Gould's 
Concise History. The student should certainly read both. Gould's Collected Essays, 
which also is still in print, has quite a good deal on various disputed points, though 
it must be said that it is not very easy to follow by one who has no previous 
acquaintance with the subject. Also Bro. H. L. Haywood gave a brief account of 
the general situation in the fourth volume of THE BUILDER, but without going 
into any detail. 


But the two writers first mentioned were more concerned with setting forth their 
own opinions than in giving an account of the development of the different theories 
and the arguments advanced to support them. And it is this that we propose to do. 
We regard this series of articles as being part of the Prolegomena to the history of 
the Masonic Ritual upon which the present authors have been collaborating for a 
number of years. This latter subject is so extraordinarily complex that it can only 
be dealt with piecemeal. No Mason will need to be told how intimately the 
question of degrees is bound up with the ritual. If some definite standing ground 
can be found as to the origin and antiquity of our present degrees a number of 
important points will have been fixed in regard to the ritual. Our present purpose, 
therefore, is to present, as fully as is practicable, the history of this more limited 



question, with the arguments and evidence and full references, with the hope that it 
may save others from much wearisome and often fruitless search. 


THE SCOPE OF THE DISCUSSION 


It must be confessed that we have been unable to make an absolutely exhaustive 
examination of everything that has been said upon the subject. This perhaps is of 
the less consequence seeing so much that has been advanced is really of no value 
whatever. In any case it would have been practically impossible. We believe, 
however, that we have collected everything of real importance. 


The chronological order will be followed roughly, though merely for the sake of 
convenience, as it is not so much a history of the problem that we wish to present 
as a clear idea of the facts available as evidence, and the deductions drawn from 
them and the hypotheses devised to interpret them. It will be seen that there has 
been a definite development of opinion; that what at first seem quite irreconcilable 
interpretations are really connected, and that there has been a convergence of 
opinion towards agreement. That complete agreement will ever be reached is not 
likely in so difficult an investigation. For this reason we propose to give the actual 
evidence as fully as possible so that our readers will, as we hope, not only be 
informed of what opinions have been advanced and by whom, but also will be in a 
position to judge and criticize for themselves. 


The earlier Masonic writers accepted all the traditions and legends at their face 
value. This was true even when they were men of some pretensions to scholarship 
and learning. When the Book of Constitutions was first published it is true that Dr. 
Anderson's account of the History of Masonry was scoffed at by profane critics, 
yet we must not judge him or them by our own standards. These same critics were 
accepting other fables as serious history. Though there was much scepticism in 
intellectual circles yet it was rather a general attitude of doubt than a careful and 
painstaking criticism. It may be said that scientific history did not come into 
existence until the nineteenth century, though of course like everything else it had 
its forerunners and predecessors in previous centuries. Also it may be said, too, 



that the methods of scientific history were not brought to bear upon the records of 
Freemasonry until within the memory of men still living. It was inevitable, then, 
that such writers as Anderson, Martin Clare, Dermott, Preston and Dr. Oliver 
should accept tradition for fact, without any real attempt to sift the truth from pure 
fable. This naive belief in Masonic legends is by no means a thing wholly of the 
past, but it is probable that the great majority of Masons who read anything at all 
about the Institution to which they belong, are aware of the difficulties, 
inconsistencies and absurdities which a literal acceptance of tradition involves. 


Even such a credulous and enthusiastic writer as Dr. Oliver, whom we have just 
mentioned, who published his first book more than a hundred years ago (in 1 823 to 
be precise), was gradually forced into a more critical attitude during his long life of 
literary activity, as his later works here and there quite plainly show. He is 
especially mentioned here as he appears to have been the first, so far as we have 
been able to discover, to advance a theory that has had many later supporters, and 
which still influences the opinions of many today. This theory is that the degree (or 
Order) of the Royal Arch was fabricated by the so-called "Antients" or by 
Laurence Dermott, their real leader and moving spirit, by the simple process of 
cutting the original third degree in two. It has been called the "mutilation" 
hypothesis; and some such idea as this was possibly in the minds of those who 
framed the peculiarly worded statement sanctioned by the United Grand Lodge of 
England at the Reconciliation of Antients and Moderns in 1813, 


.... that pure Antient Masonry consists of three degrees and no more; viz., those of 
the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craft and the Master Mason (including the 
Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch (1)). 


This definition of the original, simon-pure, brand of Masonry was, however, much 
more probably a compromise between the two systems of the Ancients and 
Modems, rather than intended as a historical verdict. Dr. Oliver's accounts of what 
happened are as little to be accepted without examination and confirmation as Dr. 
Anderson's before him. His theory is beautifully simple. The "Antients" to him 
were purely schismatic, what in America would now be called clandestine. As 
propaganda they, or Dermott for them, devised a more complex series of degrees, 
ending with the Royal Arch. In reality they gave nothing more to their initiates 



than the original and regular Grand Lodge (i.e. that of the "Modems”), but made 
them go through more grades to obtain it (2). For this reason, it was supposed (i.e. 
that the Royal Arch was tmly part of the Third Degree) it had to be retained at the 
Union, yet because it had now become a separate entity it was distinguished from 
it; really a most illogical position to take, and one that could only be possible, we 
may perhaps say, to the English, with their concern for what will work in practice 
and their total disregard for, and sublime indifference to theoretical consistency. 
The weakness of this whole hypothesis is manifest upon examination; it leaves 
quite unaccounted for the fact that the "Moderns" had long worked the Royal Arch 
themselves; that Dermott, so far from inventing it, regularly received it in Ireland 
before he ever came to London; that it was in existence quite a number of years 
before the "Antients" organized their Grand Lodge (3); and finally, that the Grand 
Lodge of Scotland never recognized it at all, though giving no more in the Third 
Degree than was communicated in England. 


A word may be said here on the terms Antient and Modern. Although there is now 
really very little excuse for misapprehending them yet there still seem to be 
brethren who, deriving their knowledge from the works of earlier writers, are 
inclined to suppose the former, or their leaders, to have been clandestine impostors, 
and the latter legitimate and regular. So far as the latter adjective goes, the 
Modems were the Regulars, for they first used this term as a description of their 
lodges, and added it to the older general epithets, "just and perfect," or "right" or 
"true." Regular in the first place meant connected with and subordinate to the 
Grand Lodge of 1717. Whether intentionally or not it was a very diplomatic move, 
as the inference naturally seemed to follow that all other Masons and Mason's 
lodges were irregular, whereas they were simply independent, remaining in all 
respects as "just and perfect" and legitimate as the "regulars" themselves. The 
distinction really, as first used, was exactly analogous to that in the Roman 
Catholic Church between "regular" and "parochial" clergy. The latter are not in any 
sense irregular, the former are called regular simply because they are under a Rule 
(regulus), or in other words belong to some Monastic Order and are subject to its 
special discipline. So the "regular" Masons were those under the newly formed 
Grand Lodge, who submitted to its jurisdiction. They were presumably free to give 
up their own independence if they so chose, but they had no right to legislate for 
those who did not care to join them (4). 



The older writers, having little but Anderson's account to go upon, assumed that 
Masonry was practically extinct in 1717, and that those who formed the Grand 
Lodge were the last remnant who by this action saved and revived the Institution, 
and that all Masons since that time are descended from them. Even today, scholars 
who certainly know better are sometimes led, in the carelessness of enthusiasm, in 
making a speech or proposing a toast, and even in writing, to assert that the United 
Grand Lodge of England is the Mother Grand Lodge of the World. As rhetoric this 
may pass, for in a limited sense (if we can properly regard it as the same 
organization as that of 1 7 1 7 one might say it was rather a daughter with two 
mothers!) it does seem true that it was the parent of the Grand Lodge organization 
of Freemasonry. In the sense that all Masons in the world have derived their 
Masonry from it, it is not only not true, but a very misleading assertion. Even 
Hughan fell into this erroneous way of speaking while intent on endeavoring to 
prove that the differences between Antient and Modern were really negligible (5). 
In truth the four lodges that formed themselves into a Grand Lodge at the Goose 
and Gridiron Tavern were but a small minority, a very small minority indeed, of 
those then existing. There were others, equally "just and perfect," "right" and 
"true,” all over England, Scotland and probably Ireland, and, as is all but certain, 
even in London itself. The Grand Lodges of the two latter countries owed nothing 
(at that time) to England or to London, except the idea and the example; and it is 
far from certain that even the idea was a wholly new one. In fact it seems to have 
been an attempt to revive the General Assembly spoken of in the old MS. 
Constitutions, whatever that may have been, and it is possible that other attempts 
had been made before, and failed, leaving no record. The "New Articles" that 
appear in one group of these documents may, like the "New Regulations" of Grand 
Master Payne, have been the work of some earlier attempted reorganization, and 
such a supposition would give some basis for Anderson's describing the action 
taken in 1717 as "reviving the quarterly communications." But this by the way. 
Originally the Assembly seems to have been a general court, in the old sense of the 
word, or as we would say today, a general meeting, composed of every Mason in a 
given district. Such actually was the London Grand Lodge in the first years of its 
existence. The same idea probably underlay the later action of the old lodge at 
York, when on certain special occasions it called itself a General or Grand Lodge. 
Presumably every Mason within reach of York was in theory supposed to attend 
and take part in its proceedings. What the lodge at York tried to do was done 
elsewhere, as notably in Scotland by Mother Kilwinning and in Germany by Royal 
York of Friendship. 



Now according to Anderson's account in his revised edition of the Constitutions, 
George Payne, Esq., upon his election and installation as Grand Master in 1718 


desired any brethren to bring to the Grand Lodge any old writings and records 
concerning Masons and Masonry, in order to shew the usages of Antient times; and 
this year several old copies of the Gothic Constitutions were produced and 
collated. 


Two years later he was again elected and Anderson notes that 


This year at some private Lodges, several very valuable manuscripts (for they had 
nothing yet in print) concerning the Lraternity, their Lodges, Regulations, Charges, 
Secrets and Usages (particularly one writ by Mr. Nicholas Stone, the Warden of 
Inigo Jones), were too hastily burnt by some scrupulous Brothers, that those papers 
might not fall into strange hands. 


We must put these two statements with that in the prefatory note to the General 
Regulations, that they were 


Compiled, first by Brother George Payne, Esq. when Grand Master A. D. 1720, 
and approved by the General Assembly at Stationer's Hall on 20th June, 1721. 

Next by order of the Duke of Montagu when Grand Master, the Author, James 
Anderson, compared them with the Antient records of the Lraternity and digested 
them into this method with proper additions and explications from the said records; 
and the Grand Lodge having revised and approved them, ordered 'em to be printed 
in the Book of Constitutions, on 25th March, 1722. 


Prom this it would appear that the chief concern of the new organization was 
legislation and regulation, and not ritual. In the second of the three excerpts the 



words "Secrets and Usages" seem to go beyond this, however, and also another 
statement, that the meeting of Grand Lodge (Dec. 27, 1721) at which the 
committee was appointed to examine Anderson's manuscript for the Book of 
Constitutions 


was made very entertaining by the Lectures of some old Masons. 


It would certainly appear from this that there was some interest in the ritual, 
indefinite as the notice is. We cannot be absolutely certain whether the word 
"lecture" is here used in the present Masonic sense, or the more general one of 
every day speech, but it would almost seem that the probability is in favor of the 
former interpretation, and it might perhaps be regarded as additional confirmation 
of this that he also uses the word "bright" as a technicality for a brother well 
conversant with the usages of the Craft. 


THE GRAND LODGE AND THE RITUAL 


However though undoubtedly the members of the Grand Lodge were occupied to 
some extent with the ritual, it would be a grave mistake to suppose that it was 
taken up in the way it would be today if a new Grand Lodge were organized. There 
would be less danger of misconception in the British Isles, and Europe generally, 
where very great liberty has always been used by individual lodges in this matter, 
than there might be in America. The method adopted was embodied in Regulation 
XI: 


All particular lodges are to observe the same usages as much as possible; in order 
to which, and also for cultivating a good understanding among Free Masons, some 
members of every Lodge shall be deputed to visit the other Lodges as often as shall 
be thought convenient. 



And in the second edition Anderson adds to this that 


The same usages, for Substance, are actually observed in every Lodge; which is 
much owing to visiting Brothers who compare the usages. This shows us that exact 
uniformity did not exist, but that practically this rule had produced something 
approaching general agreement in ritual essentials. Anderson's remark of course 
applies only to London, and the area so quaintly described as "within the Bills of 
Mortality." Outside of the London district much wider variations undoubtedly 
appeared. 


A frequently quoted passage from the introductory pages of Dermotf s Ahiman 
Rezon (7) may help to give some further light on the subject. He has just 
previously been commenting on Anderson's brief statement that Sir Christopher 
Wren "neglected the office of Grand Master," which he accepts as a fact, and 
explains as due to the unjust and ungrateful treatment he received at the hands of 
the authorities, as well as to his age, ascribing the decay of Freemasonry to the 
disgust and indignation of the brethren generally at this action, and their refusal to 
accept the new nominee of the King. This of course is all unhistorical, there being 
no evidence whatever that Wren was Grand Master, or even a Freemason for that 
matter (6), and still less that his successor in the office of "Surveyor of the Royal 
Works" was ipso facto Grand Master. However, Dermott after stating that though 
inactive in London 


. . . the Lodges in the country, particularly in Scotland and at York, kept up their 
ancient formalities, customs and usages, without alteration, adding or diminishing, 
to this hour, from whence they may justly be termed the most ancient, etc. 


from which he leaves his reader to infer that his Grand Lodge, being in fraternal 
relationship with Scotland at least, was likewise entitled to be styled "Ancient." 
And then in the next paragraph he goes on to make the statement above referred to, 
which runs as follows: 



About the year 1717 some joyous companions, who had passed the degree of a 
craft (though very rusty), resolved to form a lodge for themselves, in order (by 
conversation) to recollect what had formerly been dictated to them, or if that 
should be found impracticable, to substitute something new, which might for the 
future pass for Masonry amongst themselves. At this meeting the question was 
asked, whether any person in the assembly knew the Master's part, and beings 
answered in the negative, it was resolved, nem. con., that the deficiency should be 
made up with a new composition, and what fragments of the old order found 
amongst them, should be immediately reformed and made more pliable to the 
humours of the people. 


And he then goes on to give an intentionally ridiculous and fantastic account of the 
changes made, which, nevertheless, quite obviously hints at the differences in the 
ritual forms of the two organizations for those able to read between the lines. 


This whole passage till comparatively recently was taken as absolutely baseless, 
ill-natured, slander. But the juster view of the position of the Antients and their 
claims has led to a material change in this judgment. What Dermott wrote is 
obviously "propaganda," but he was too clever a controversialist, and we may fully 
believe, too good a man and Mason, to deliberately publish what he knew to be 
false. It was some forty-seven or eight years after the event that this was written, 
which though a considerable period was not too long for personal reminiscences to 
have come to him at least at second hand. He naturally put them in as unfavorable 
a light as possible for his opponents, but it is not straining probability to suppose 
that some information may have reached him other than the official account given 
in Anderson's second edition of the Constitutions. The points specially to be noted 
in what he says are these: first, that those who formed the Modern (but senior) 
Grand Lodge were Fellowcrafts but not Master Masons, that, secondly, they 
invented a third degree, and last, that there was considerable uncertainty among 
them as to what was ritually correct. The possible significance of the first two 
points will appear later. The last would be fully accounted for by supposing that a 
number of varying usages were represented. As we have seen from what Anderson 
himself says, this would appear to have actually been the case, and there is other 
evidence to the same effect that we shall have to consider in due course. 



So far what has been said is merely clearing the ground for the discussion of the 
question in hand. The whole matter is so exceedingly complex that it is very 
difficult to present it clearly, and still more difficult to present it impartially. Any 
attempt at simplification would almost of necessity involve treating it from an ex 
parte standpoint, and though the present authors have their own opinion, as will 
appear in the sequel, the intention here is to present the evidence and not to argue 
for any special conclusion. 


THE REACTION FROM TRADITIONAL VIEWS 


We noted that Dr. Oliver, toward the end of his career, had given up the traditional 
history and legends of Freemasonry, and to those familiar with the character of his 
many works the fact itself will be significant, for he was the complete reverse of a 
sceptical or critical scholar, and the evidence would have to be very strong to make 
him discard his earlier belief. His change of attitude, however, was not very clearly 
or definitely made, nor did he give his reasons in any detail. 


The next author of note in this connection was David Murray Lyon, who published 
his History of the lodge of Edinburgh in 1873, six years after Dr. Oliver's demise. 
Just how much influence, if any, the belated scepticism of the elder author had 
upon the views of the younger we have no means of estimating, but from Lyon's 
own references to his predecessor it may have been considerable. He was certainly 
familiar with Oliver's works for he quotes him on this very point. The credulous 
enthusiasm of the one would produce a mental reaction in a historian of Lyon's 
type, which would be further reinforced by his predecessor's later and rather 
reluctant reversal of opinion. However it was, Lyon played the part of an 
iconoclast in Masonic tradition. 


His work deals, as its title indicates, with the history of the old Lodge of Edinburgh 
or "Mary's Chapel," but in dealing with this he was obliged practically to write a 
history of Freemasonry in Scotland. In his work he gives in full the Schaw 
Statutes, the St. Clair Charters, and copious extracts from the minutes of the Lodge 
of Mary's Chapel (the earliest of those still extant being dated July, 1599) and 



quotations from the minutes of other old lodges of the seventeenth and early 
eighteeth centuries. Upon these he bases the following conclusions regarding 
Scotch Masonry, to which he strictly confines himself. That the operative craft of 
Masonry was fully organized from an early date, though he does not allow 
anything very definite before 1590; that the Masons possessed a secret spoken of 
as "the Word;” that this was communicated to those newly entered in a simple 
ceremony, great stress being laid on its simplicity; that there is no trace of any 
further secrets than this Mason Word, which apparently was communicated to 
Apprentices; that the passing of "Fellows of Craft" could not have been a degree in 
the present sense of the word because Apprentices were present when the new 
Fellows were "received"; and that from a very early period a considerable number 
of nonoperatives, mostly of high social position, became members of the lodges, 
and in some cases presided in them, although most of the old lodges retained a 
genuinely operative character much later than was the case in England. Two 
further conclusions are obvious, though not particularly stressed, that the later 
Speculative system was intimately connected with the earlier Operative 
organization when it was introduced or came it being, and that the Speculative 
Masonry of the London Grand Lodge in 1721 was sufficiently like that of the 
Operative Masonry of Edinburgh to enable the secretary of Mary's Chapel to 
record, under date of Aug. 24 of that year, that 


. . . John Theophilus Desaguliers, Fellow of the Royall Societie and Chaplain in 
Ordinary to his Grace James Duke of Chandois, late Generali Master of the 
Mason's Lodges in England, being in town and desirous to have a conference with 
the Deacon, Warden and Master Masons of Edinr., which was accordingly granted, 
and finding him qualified in all points of Masonry, they received him as a Brother 
into their Societie. (8) 


From this entry, and the two following ones, dated Aug. 25 and 28, on which days 
it seems that a number of socially prominent men petitioned and were “admitted 
and received Entered Apprentices and Fellow-Crafts accordingly," Lyon concluded 
that Desaguliers had come to Scotland on a missionary expedition. 


There can be but one opinion as to the nature and object of Dr. Desaguliers' visit to 
the Lodge of Edinburgh. In the interval between his initiation in London and his 



affiliation as a member of the Scottish Fraternity, he had been a prime mover in 
instituting the English Grand Lodge; and had in conjunction with other learned 
craftsmen been engaged in the fabrication of a "Master's part," in the preparation of 
a constitution for the newly formed body, and in the catechetical arrangement of its 
lectures (9). 


He goes on to say that he was no doubt "animated by a desire for the spread of the 
new system" and that it appears probable that, through his social position, he had 
influenced the attendance of the Provost and Magistrates and other city magnates 
to apply for entrance to the Masonic fellowship "in order to give a practical 
illustration of the system "with which his name was so closely associated," and 
goes on to say 


.... it is more than probable that on both occasions the ceremony of entering and 
passing would, as far as the circumstances of the Lodge would permit, be 
conducted by Desaguliers himself in accordance with the ritual he was anxious to 
introduce. 


In comment on this we must say that there seems to be a good deal of conjecture in 
this statement, especially for a member of a school of Masonic research that so 
strenuously objects to conjectures when made by others. All we are told definitely 
is that the officers and members of Mary's Chapel found Desaguliers "qualified in 
all points of Masonry" whatever that may have meant exactly to the "Clerk, Ro. 
Alison," who recorded it. "All points" seems to suggest something more than a 
single word as the solitary secret of Masonry. It is true that Lyon himself says (10): 


... if the communication by Mason Lodges of secret words or signs constituted a 
degrees term of modern application to the esoteric observances of the Masonic 
body then there was, under the purely Operative regime, only one known to Scotch 
Lodges viz., that in which, under an oath, apprentices obtained a knowledge of the 
Mason Word and all that was implied in the expression. 



What was implied by the expression is more fully set out just before: 


But that this talisman consisted of something more than a word is evident from 
"the secrets of the Mason Word" being referred to in the minute-book of the lodge 
of Dunblane, and from the further information drawn from that of Haughfoot viz., 
that in 1707 the word was accompanied by a grip. 


Lyon therefore seems to admit, rather grudgingly it would appear, for he does not 
put it definitely, that what was known as the "Mason's Word" by the world at large, 
(1 1) implied a secret ceremony exceedingly "bare and simple" though and certain 
accompaniments, such as the grip definitely mentioned at Haughfoot, and possibly 
(or probably?) a sign or signs. Such a set of secrets might well have been all that 
was meant by Alison's phrase "all points of Masonry." 


But Lyon proceeds to conjecture that Desaguliers not only wanted to propagate the 
new secrets alleged to have been fabricated by himself and others in London 
shortly before, but that he exemplified (as we should say) the new "part" or degree, 
at the two following meetings. Now the record apparently, at least as quoted by 
Lyon, does not even say he was present, though we must allow that the Doctor's 
visit most probably did have some connection with the rather exceptional influx of 
highly placed Candidates. The fact that Desaguliers had been invited by the 
authorities of the city of Edinburgh to give them advice, as a scientific expert on 
hydraulics, on a proposed system of waterworks would account for it in part. This 
fact, which, apparently, was not known to Lyon, tends very much to lessen the 
probability of the supposition that the "learned Doctor" was there chiefly in the 
capacity of a propagator of new degrees. That he was something of what in 
America would be called a ritualist would seem to follow from the fact that he was 
chosen, according to Anderson, to act as Master of the "Occasional Lodge" in 
which the Prince of Wales was made an "Enter'd Prentice and Fellow Craft" at 
Kew on Nov. 5, 1737, but as Gould points out (13) the statement that he was the 
"fabricator" of a "Master's Part" is itself pure conjecture, based upon nothing more 
than the further purely hypothetical supposition that such a part was fabricated, and 
that such an outstanding figure in the new organization, from his ability and 
education, might plausibly be supposed to have had a finger in the pie. 



We may conclude, it would seem, considering all the facts, that Desaguliers was 
present at these two subsequent meetings of the Lodge of Mary's Chapel; it may be 
safely said indeed that it would have been strange if he were not; but that he took a 
prominent part in whatever ceremonies were performed is pure guesswork; and 
that he exemplified the ritual of a quite new degree seems impossible, for he would 
first have had to communicate it to the officers and members of the lodge before it 
could be given to the candidates. The more the point is considered the more 
impossible it is seen to be. why should the conservative members of this ancient 
lodge, who had such a "guid conceit" of themselves, accept a novelty from a 
"Southron" ? And except as a novelty, which he, as one of its inventors, could 
communicate as he pleased, he could hardly have given it, for the very simplest 
form imaginable of any Master's part that corresponded to our Third Degree would 
need at least three to carry it out. On this ground alone Lyon's theory would seem 
impossible. 


NOTES 


(1) Gould, Concise History, Revised Edition, p. 261. 

(2) Oliver, Revelations of a Square (1855), Chap. 4, p. 91. He says the "refractory 
brethren . . . commenced the practise of a species of Freemasonry unknown in 
former times. They instituted a novel degree, which they called the Royal Arch, 
compounded out of a portion of the third degree, and from various continental 
innovations, which gave them a vast advantage in the minds of curious and 
unthinking persons, over the pure and ancient system practiced by the old Grand 
Lodge" (i. e., the "Modern" Grand Lodge), and he intimates the same thing in other 
places. See his Origin of the Royal Arch Degree and Discrepancies of Masonry. 

(3) Gould, op. cit. pp. 235 and 252. 

(4) The statement in the text needs modification of course. Though it is far too big 
a subject to dispose of in a note yet it may be said here that there was a shadow of 
a right. Had the first Grand Lodge remained an annual Assembly of all Masons in 
London, and restricted its jurisdiction to the London area it might have claimed, on 



the basis of the Old Charges, to be the sole arbiter of things Masonic within its own 
limits. 


(5) Hughan, English Rite, p. 123. 

(6) Gould, op. cit. p. 100. See also his larger History. 

(7) Ahiman Rezon, second edition, Address "to the Gentlemen of the Most Ancient 
and Honorable Fraternity." 

(8) Lyon, History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, p. 150. 

(9) Ibid p. 151. 

(10) Ibid. p. 23. 

(1 1) Gould, op. cit. p. 182, gives three instances between 1649 and 1691 where the 
phrase was used by non-Masons. 

(12) Gould, History of Freemasonry, Yorston edition, vol. 3, p. 38. 

(13) Ibid, vol. 3, p. 39 


— o — 


The Kabala and Freemasonry 


By BRO. L. F. STRAUSS, Massachusetts 


IN THE BUILDER for May, 1927, there appeared an article entitled The Essenes; 
in July was published Freemasonry and the Essenes; in the January number 1928 
appeared an article entitled The Kabala. These three articles constitute a kind of 
introduction to this one. 



Whence! Whither goest thou? 


This question audible on top of a mountain, in the depths of a valley, on the shore 
of the ocean, becomes especially impressive when the wanderer in a dark night 
from the summit of a hill catches the first glimpse of the rising sun, or when 
standing on the shore of the ocean he or she watches the King of Day coming out 
from the bottom of the sea. At such a moment a luminous ray seems to fall into the 
innermost depths of the human soul and a something in our being seems to obtain a 
momentary glimpse of a strange, mysterious land filled with most wonderful things 
and promises. For the production and the obtaining of such a glimpse, once upon a 
time, long, long ago, and for the Eleusian mysteries had been instituted. 


After such a glimpse and the song of the birds how cheerful, the sight of grass, of 
bush and tree, of flower and blossom, how brilliant and how cheerful! How 
glorious to a Grecian youth this hour was! Demeter appeared in the most charming 
garb. Proserpina lovingly extended her luminous arms; the wanderer, the 
candidate, stood bewildered. The inner illumination, the outer intoxication is 
expended; the ancient initiate awakens and finds himself in the realm of grim and 
hoary Pluto. A modern investigator in a similar condition would have recourse to 
the most recent paragraphs found in Freud, or having a predilection for 
metaphysics, he would theorize about supra-consciousness, and the subliminal self. 


"A name, what's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." As 
Goethe said: Und wo die Begriffe fehlen da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich 
ein; when concepts are lacking names are substituted. The story is old, oh so old! 
Philosophized over by thousands of demagogues in rhapsodies ! What does it 
mean? For human guidance in the domain of philosophy we will recommend 
Heraklitos, Plato, Spinoza, Kant, William James. In the domain of metaphysics we 
will give Pythagoras, Jacob Boehme and Swedenborg. 


THE BLINDNESS OF THE HEART OF MAN 



From time immemorial the Power from on High has been working to arouse in the 
heart of man a realization of the importance of this question: Whence and whither? 
As an answer, as a means for an end, religion has been substituted. Special 
messengers have brought the glad tidings: "Glory to God on High and Peace to 
Men of Good Will." 


Has all this been in vain ? A strange, a very strange story, an impressive warning, 
is recorded in the Book of Books: the story of a deluge in which all flesh was 
destroyed except Noah and his three sons. A most wonderful explanation or rather 
elucidation of this "catastrophe" is given in the Kabala from which Freemasonry 
has its nomenclature and its symbolism. In commemoration of this event we are 
given a most hopeful promise and as a token of this promise the is presented with 
the seven-colored rainbow. 


So Freemasonry presents to the valiant wanderer some most beautiful scenes, and 
in one is given a strange act and in the midst of this act we hear in a most 
impressive, or what is intended as a most impressive, tone of voice, the word, 
"Search." 


Oh, how they have longed to whisper, to shout into the ears of the helpless sons of 
men, the proper, the divinely revealed directions which lead to The Promised Land. 


In vain? No. But how undeveloped is the ear, how dim is the eye, how primitive 
the intellect, how weak the will, how slow the step of the hesitating wanderer! The 
zealous guide reproves and encourages; with an aching heart he exclaims like unto 
the Apostle Paul. "Ye are still babes and cannot stand strong meat. 



After this introduction we will now come to our subject, to the secrets enshrined in 
the Holy of Holies of an organization formed by the genus homo and known to the 
sons of men by the name of Modem Freemasonry. 


What a strange, what a wonderful panorama is here presented to the eye, what 
strange words are whispered into the ears of the wandering candidate! Never has 
the ingenuity of man worked so assiduously, so strenuously, so mysteriously in 
order to stir to activity hands and feet, to inspire with renewed zeal the heart and 
mind, to arouse at least a sincere desire for information. 


But the Angel sighs and the Devil laughs: "Love’s labor lost." We even hear or 
read in print: "Honorificabilitudinatibus." What does this mean ? Who cares to 
know? 


There comes here an awful, baffling question. What is greater, the intensity of 
ignorance or the degree of indifference? But courage! Onward, onward! whispers 
here an inner voice. 


THE WONDERS OF THE COMMONPLACE 


A child is born, a human child; the eyes open, the child sees, it feels, it hears, it 
tastes, it smells. Mother and father furnish whatever is needed for the sustaining of 
life; of life, to an outside observer, still unconscious. 


The child, the new member of genus homo, finds him or herself in a world in 
which he or she soon feels perfectly at home, in which home everything is so 
simple, so natural, so self-evident. Cause and effect, action and consequence, work 
and compensation, merit and reward. How simple, how natural everything is and 



seems. Strange? What is strange? Does not every eye see the same things the same 
way? 


A chick comes from an egg. This always was and this always will be. The average 
farmer's wife, the most intellectual savage, cannot be influenced by the most 
brilliant eloquence, the most logical reasoning, to see here anything strange. 


The flights of Colonel Lindbergh, how wonderful they seem now to the eye when 
seen in the paper, to the ear when heard in a discussion. In a short, in a brief span 
of time when airships will sail daily, when airplanes will be as common as autos 
are today, how simple, how natural will they seem. They will have become just as 
simple, just as natural as the telephone, the telegraph, the radio. 


Now again to our subject: O son of man, whence and whither? The answer, the true 
answer, the only answer of real value, is old, very old; divinely revealed it has been 
given to the genus homo thousands, thousands of years ago. 


Why has this answer not been made public property ? Why was it not proclaimed 
in a loud voice ? Why was it not written or printed in letters black or golden on 
papyrus or on sheets of modem paper? 


Why do Plato and Origen inform us that whenever they had to choose between 
stating anything so plainly that some not yet ready might understand, or so 
obscurely that some ready would fail to grasp, they, Plato and Origen, preferred 
obscurity to plainness of speech or script ? 


This awful oath of secrecy administered to the candidate in Freemasonry ! 



There comes to the mental eye a wonderful scene: a Teacher, speaking from the 
top of a mountain to an eager audience: "Do not give that which is holy unto dogs. 
Do not cast pearls before swine lest they turn and rend you and their second state is 
worse than their first." Strange, very strange this declaration of the Master seems to 
the uninitiated, the great multitude. 


In a preceding article entitled "The Kabala" (the recognized textbook of 
Freemasonry), this writer intimated that the wish is father to the thought. In his 
opinion the time had come when some of the secrets so carefully veiled in Greek 
mysteries, in the Hermetica, by Plato, in the Kabala and in the shrine of Masonry 
may, can, shall be given to the sons of man. 


Now comes the question, which secrets ? How much? In what dress? 


WILLIAM JAMES, A TRANSCENDENTAL THINKER 


This writer also affirmed in a former article that William James, the recognized 
foremost American thinker, had, in the last ten years of his life, through his own 
mental unfoldment, aided by providential factors, come to an understanding of this 
our Universe, of its origin and destiny; close, very close, to the tenets, the 
teachings, the doctrines proclaimed and reflected in the Kabala, the textbook of 
Freemasonry. 


As providential factors we may consider: First, the father of William James was a 
Swedenborgian minister, a learned theologian; second, the training received by 
William James included physics, physiology, materia medica, psychology and 
metaphysics. The psychological views, theories, doctrines of James have become 
tenets in the textbooks on psychology in European schools and colleges; the 
metaphysics of William James have been woven into the textbooks of philosophy 
in our schools of theology. Understood? In the opinion of the writer, one-tenth. 
The third providential factor is this: William James became an investigator of 



Psychic Phenomena and an Associate and for one period President of the Society 
for Psychical Research. Fourth providential factor: William James in the last ten 
years of his life became familiar with the work of Theodore Fechner. 


FECHNER THE FOUNDER OF PSYCHO-PHYSICS 


The Encyclopedia Britannica calls Theodore Fechner the "Father of Psycho- 
Physics" and in the article on Metaphysics, after treating the reader to four pages of 
closely printed extracts from his doctrines, it remarks: "We have dwelt on these 
curious metaphysics of Fechner because it contains the master key to the 
philosophies of the present moment." 


Ye Gods ! A living illustration of the fact that some things printed even in the 
Encyclopedia Britannica may not constitute the truth and bringing a warning, an 
admonition, "do not judge others by yourself." The philosophy of Fechner is 
appreciated, his doctrines, his Weltanschauung is accepted, is endorsed, by the 
writer of the article on metaphysics in the Encyclopedia Britannica, is accepted by 
William James, by some theosophists, by L. F. Strauss, and possibly a few others; 
but there is today, as far as this writer can find out, in this our world, on this planet 
Earth, no school, no textbooks on philosophy or theology where the 
Weltanschauung, the doctrines, the tenets, the theories of Theodore Fechner are 
presented. 


Oh, there is one admirer, even follower: Elwood Worcester, Rector of Emmanuel 
Church, in the city of Boston. In the preface of his book, The Living World, he 
says: 


This book owes its existence, its substance, and whatever merits it possesses to one 
of the greatest and least appreciated thinkers of the 19th century, Theodore 
Fechner. The effect of his personality and of his thought meant a turning point in 
my life and his influence has deepened in the passing years. Fechner, like Balzac, 



was so absolutely original and so far in advance of his time that his words fell on 
unheeding ears. 


The greatest of Fechner’s works can be compared only with the sacred books of 
the nation. They are inspired and they contain a true revelation of God. 


I have called it the Living Word in memory of the ZendA vesta which Fechner 
believed to have that meaning. 


The Weltanschauung, the main tenets of Fechner, are given in his final work 
entitled "The Daylight View" versus "The Night View." Fechner indicates that he 
considers his own interpretation of life and of human destiny as a "Daylight View" 
when compared with the other now-existing philosophies and theologies. 


Now again The Kabala. 


To the contents of the article The Kabala published in the January number of THE 
BUILDER we will add a few things that recently came ante oculos. George 
Frederick Parsons says: 


That Balzac must have studied the Kabalists is quite clear. They taught, however, 
that matter, heat and motion were in fact condition of matter. But then the 
Kabalists held what modern science cannot bring itself to, namely, that between 
spirit and matter there is no real barrier, that spirit informs all matter, etc. 


Macoy Masonic Publishing Company seems to recognize something of special 
merit in the book entitled Comte de Gabalis, by De Pillars, a French priest and 



nobleman. We will select from this book a few gems that should bring 
enlightenment or at least food for thought. 


In its original form the system of esoteric Masonry was identical with that of the 
Kabala (1).... 


The Cabala, a sacred book of the Jews, is an occult interpretation or key to the 
Scriptures and contains explicit revelation of the art of communing with spirits. 
Tradition states that it has been transmitted from Adam and Abraham by a 
continuous chain of Initiates to the Hebrew race today. The Cabala can be read in 
seven different ways. Its inner mystery has never been written, but is imparted 
orally by Hierophant to disciples. In its original form the system of esoteric 
Masonry was identical with that of the Cabala. . . 


He who seeks divine knowledge will surely find it, for the divinity in man ever 
strives to render unto him his lost birthright. No sincere efforts to solve God's 
mysteries passes unheeded by the Silent Watcher within.... 


We are but a little part of God. . 


The philosophers told that the relation of God the Creator to His creation has been 
the same in all ages, that all creeds evolved by man are but man's concept of this 
religion and in no wise can alter it; that the truth regarding the fatherhood of God, 
sonship of His messengers, the great teachers of humanity and brotherhood of all 
His creatures, is superior to creeds and religions and will unify them when once 
comprehended. In love we find the secrets of divine unity. It is love that unites the 
higher and lower stages and uplifts everything to that stage where all must be one. 



The Kabalist acts solely according to the principles of nature, and if strange words 
and symbols are sometimes found in our books they are only used to conceal the 
principles of natural philosophy from the ignorant. 


These ignorant, tristissime dicta number 9999 out of a 10,000 of the genus homo, 
and 999 out of 1000 members of Freemasons (in the opinion of L. F. Strauss) 
belong to the same category, that is, to the ignorant. We will restate one baffling 
question: what is greater, the density of ignorance or the degree of indifference ? 


Continuing our quotations from the Comte de Gabalis: 


I and my Father are one. . 


Agla is here used for the ineffable name of the Sun behind the Sun which is the last 
word in Masonry. . . 


I call upon Thee, O Living God Radiant with Illuminating Fire! O Unseen Parent 
of the Son! Pour Forth Thy Life-Giving Power and Energise the Divine Spark! 
Enter into this Flame and Let it be Agitated by the Breath of Thy Holy Spirit. 
Manifest Thy Power and Open for Me the Temple of Almighty God which is 
within this Fire. Manifest Thy bight for My Regeneration, and Let the Breadth, 
Height, Fullness and Crown of the Soul Appear, and May the God Within Shine 
Forth! 


We may quote here the following passage from the poet Browning: 


Truth is within ourselves, it takes no rise From outward things, whatever you may 
believe: There is an inmost center in us all Where truth abides in fullness and 



around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect clear perception 
which is truth, A baffling and perfecting carnal mesh Blinds it and makes all 
errors, and to know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned 
splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light. Supposed to be without. 


The discovery of radium upset the scientifically established principles of matter; 
the thirty-seven primary substances, although predicated, analyzed most learnedly 
and explained, yet melted and disappeared into an airy nothing and are today no 
longer printed in the textbooks of our schools and colleges; the Doctrine of 
Relativity not yet analyzed, and in the opinion of this writer not understood, 
modified (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica our conception of the law of 
gravitation formulated by Sir Isaac Newton. How small and insignificant these 
changes of tenets, these modifications of opinion and belief will appear when 
compared with the "revolution" in the mind of man, even in the minds of scientists, 
philosophers and theologians, when the secret doctrines of the Kabala will have 
been given to the world. We will give one change which is to be expected: the 
scientific parlance about the temperature and its changes upon this our planet; the 
explanations given for the greater heat in British Columbia when compared with 
the temperature in Labrador; of Ireland when compared with corresponding 
latitudes in Russia or Sweden; the Gulf Stream, the Japanese current! Who laughs? 
Generations yet unborn will smile at some of the tenets in our school books, just as 
we smile today at some of the strange explanations given in the textbooks of our 
fathers, concerning this phenomenal world. The Doctrine of Evolution; the 
ignorance of scientists was pointed out by this writer in the words of William 
James, printed in the July number of THE BUILDER last year, and it was pointed 
out that here also the teachings, the doctrines, presented in The Kabala would 
supply the deficiency, correct errors of scientists, philosophers and theologians. 


There are more things under heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in your 
philosophy, Horatio. 


After a careful deliberation and consideration it was decided to give as a first 
introduction to our Kabala, in place of Kabalistic nomenclature, the 
Weltanschauung of Theodore Fechner and then present to the reader the 
elucidation of this Weltanschauung by William James, America's greatest thinker. 



A brief extract from the Encyclopedia Britannica on Fechnerian philosophy: 


The Day- view is the view that God is the psycho-physical, all-embracing, the law 
and consciousness of this world. It resembles the views of Hegel and Lotze in its 
pantheistic tendency. But it does not, like them, sacrifice our personality, because, 
according to Fechner, the one divine consciousness includes as a large circle 
includes small circles. By this ingenious suggestion of the membership of one 
spirit of another, Fechner’ s Day-view also puts nature in a different position; 
neither, with Hegel, subliminuting it to the thought of God's mind, nor, with Fotze, 
degrading it to the phenomena of our human mind but identifying it with the outer 
appearance of one spirit to the other spirit. 


Here follows an interpretation of the foregoing by the author of this article: This, 
our planet, called Earth, Mother Earth, is a conscious, struggling, rejoicing, 
sorrowing, evolving Being. Our bodies are parts, a part of the body of this, our 
Mother Earth. Our ego, our self, our consciousness, our suband supra-conscious 
self is a part of this, our Mother, or Father of this planet called the Earth. The 
physical part of this planet is a part of the solar system; the solar system is a part of 
this, our Universe, sometimes called the Infinite. Now, the consciousness of Father 
and Mother Earth is a part of the consciousness of the Holy, Holy, Holy Being, that 
ensouls this solar system; this solar Universe and this solar system, this our 
Universe constitutes our Father Who is in heaven. 


THE TRUTH BEHIND PANTHEISM 


The Word in our Bible, the Logos of Heraklitos, of Philo, of John the Elder and of 
Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles: "There is no death." All forms of life, even the 
animal and vegetable kingdoms have a continuous existence in the bosom of 
Mother Earth and in this bosom resides the force that makes this our world go its 
round in a predetermined way in a given direction. William James said in his 
Hibbert Lectures in 1899: 



The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The entire Earth on 
which we live must have, according to Fechner [and the Kabala as well], its own 
collective consciousness. So must each sun, moon and planet. So must the whole 
solar system have its own wider consciousness in which the consciousness of our 
Earth plays a part. So has the entire starry system as such its consciousness. 


Later on James says also: 


The earthsoul he passionately believes in, he treats the earth as our special 
guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to the saints (2). 


Let us now return to Fechner himself: 


Quite similarly then we must suppose that my consciousness of myself and of 
yourself, although in their immediacy they keep separate and know nothing of each 
other, are yet known and used together in the higher consciousness, that of the 
human race, say into which they enter as constituent parts.... Think of the Earth's 
beauty, a shining ball, sky and sunlit over one-half, the other faded in starry night, 
reflecting the heavens from all her waters, myriads of light and shadows in the 
folds of her mountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a Spectacle of 
rainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her from her 
own mountain tops. . . . The landscape is her face, a peopled landscape, too, for 
man's eyes would appear in it as diamonds among the dewdrops. . . . Every element 
has its own living denizens. Can the celestial ocean of ether whose waves are light, 
in which the Earth itself floats, not have hers higher by as much as their element is 
higher, swimming without fins flying without wings, as by a half-spiritual force 
through the half-spiritual sea." .... Yes, the Earth is our common guardian angel 
who watches over all our interests combined.... Where is no vision the people 
perish. Few professional philosophers have any vision; Fechner had vision. 



Satis! Satis! Quod sufficit. NOTES 


(1) Comte de Gabalis, page 4, Commentary by the Brothers. 

(2) The reader may compare this with the ideas expressed in Bulwer Lytton's 
esoteric novel, Zanoni. 


— o — 


The Chief Workman 


IN the clash of different theories of the origin of Freemasonry one thing seems to 
be universally accepted, and that is that our Speculative Fraternity in some way 
derives from the organization of the working stone masons of the Middle Ages. 

The connection between the two, however, is very far from being agreed upon, and 
three or four different methods or types of explanation may be distinguished. 
Perhaps it might be better to say that there are two chief tendencies, each of which 
is again subdivided. One group holds that a Speculative system was always the 
possession of the Operative Craft, the extreme traditionalists believing that 
everything that exists now always existed, while others would contend only for 
some embryonic germ of symbolism that began to develop as the Operative 
features died out. On the other hand are those who, having a supreme contempt for 
the mere artisan, or mechanic, however skillful he might be in his work, hold that 
everything of a Speculative nature was deliberately imported by superior men, 
philosophers, mystics, occultists, aristocrats or what not, for the purpose of 
transmitting their teaching or executing their purposes, using the Operative 
organization as a mask or veil. These again may be subdivided into those who 
would set the period of this introduction of an alien purpose into the Craft far back 
in the centuries, perhaps in the time of the Crusades, perhaps even earlier, while 
others would put it at a more recent date, say towards the end of the seventeenth 
century, or even later. 



In such cases, the fewer facts we have at command the wider is the scope of 
speculative fancy in propounding hypotheses. The more we learn about the subject 
the more difficult it becomes to discover an explanation into which all the facts 
will fit without straining or distorting them, yet at the same time the greater 
becomes the probability of the accuracy of the interpretation that does coordinate 
them. For this reason those who are interested in the fascinating problem of origins 
cannot afford to neglect the history of architecture, and especially the architecture 
of the Middle Ages. And, for our special purpose, the problem of the architect must 
not be neglected. 


Unfortunately there is much misunderstanding on the subject, and indeed not a 
little downright misinformation also. Many years ago J.W. Papworth, an English 
architect, published an essay on the Superintendents of English Buildings in the 
Middle Ages. It appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British 
Architects in 1887, and though reprinted later, is exceedingly difficult to obtain. 
Since then other writers have taken up the subject, but mostly in a form not readily 
available to the non-professional seeker for information. In Mr. M. S. Briggs' 
recent work, The Architect in History, much information of a most valuable 
character is put into popular form. The work is interesting and suggestive from the 
first to the last page, but the part dealing with the Middle Ages is of especial value 
to the Masonic student. 


Mr. Briggs is himself an architect, and while this puts him in many ways in an 
especially advantageous position to deal with the subject, it may also have some 
disadvantages, notably that of finding some difficulty in seeing the wood on 
account of his proximity to the trees. However when he says that 


....the design and erection of every large and complicated building in the past 
involved the control of some masterbrain, that no group or committee could have 
taken its place, 


it will be agreed that he is speaking as an expert and that his opinion must be given 
the fullest consideration. 



In order to do justice to what he has to say later it may be well to give another 
quotation dealing with the meaning of the term, or rather with function of the 
architect. After some discussion of various definitions, and a disclaimer of any 
attempt to venture on the "thorny topic" of the difference in scope between 
architecture and building, he says 


To most of us, Ruskin's definition that, "Architecture is the art which so disposes 
and adorns the edifices raised by man . . . that the sight of them contributes to his 
mental health, power and pleasure" is far preferable to Sir Gilbert Scott's dictum 
that, "Architecture, as distinguished from mere building, is the decoration of 
construction." The latter view, constantly fomented by Ruskin himself, did infinite 
harm to English architecture in Victorian days, and is still too common among the 
general public, but especially among engineers, who persist in regarding an 
architect primarily as one who applies ornament to structures. 


He quotes Ruskin again where he states only a sculptor or painter can be an 
architect, and then gives his own conception 


. . . that the architect is simply one who designs buildings and superintends their 
erection: they may or may not be "ornamental," but to constitute works of 
architecture they must be both well proportioned and well constructed. 


In this it would almost seem that the author had not fully analyzed his own 
conceptions. The first clause of his definition is perfectly clear, but then there 
seems little in it to differentiate the architect from the engineer; architecture would 
be only a specialization of engineering arising from purely external and practical 
reasons, similar to those that give rise to the differences between other branches of 
engineering. But when he brings the idea of proportion into architecture, he is 
adding something to the function of the architect which does really differentiate 
him from the engineer. The designing done by the architect is of a different 
character, it not only includes good construction and adaptation to the purpose, but 



also the effect from an aesthetic point of view and thus something like the 
"ornamental" of Ruskin and Scott, to which he so strongly objects, has crept in 
unawares. 


It is quite the thing now-a-days to have great scorn and contempt for Ruskin, but it 
may be that the grounds for this are largely not in what Ruskin meant, but what he 
was supposed to mean, both by his disciples and his critics. He wrote and lectured 
so much and over so long a period that it was hardly possible for him to have been 
always consistent, and his own highly artistic method of expressing himself led 
him to emphasis and exaggeration in many cases where he had some special 
purpose in view or particular point to make. A writer is entitled to be judged by the 
whole of what he has said, but the more he has written the more difficult will be 
the task of doing this, and the more probability that he will be judged by some 
partial utterance that has impressed itself on the critic. Ruskin seems to have 
regarded architecture as sculpture on a large scale, and certainly in all his criticism 
of art he always emphasized the importance of the proper disposition of "masses" 
which one can only take to be essentially the same thing as proportion. So that the 
architect becomes one who conceives and plans and superintends the erection of 
structures that are well proportioned. And that essentially brings his work into the 
circle of the "fine arts," however close he may be to the frontier of mere building 
or engineering. 


THE PROBLEM OF AESTHETICS 


But this brings us to the root of the general problem of which that of the function 
of the architect is but a special case. What is the relationship between the artist and 
the artisan, between making something useful and making the useful thing also 
beautiful? Prehistoric man carved his bone implements in such wise that we can 
see in them real elements of taste and beauty, though it is sometimes not easy to 
realize their utilitarian character. Modern savages do the same. Indeed it would 
seem, making a sweeping generalization, that mankind tends always to make the 
things that he most needs, also the things most beautiful. 



Consider all through the ages, the care and pains taken in ornamenting weapons, 
especially in times and places where weapons were of the highest importance to 
the individual. That the buildings most important to a community should be those 
on which the greatest pains are taken to make beautiful, imposing, magnificent, is 
but an outcome, it would appear, of this general tendency. The artist always begins 
by being an artisan; or it may be put the other way about with equal truth. There 
has probably been no social organization where the divorce between the two things 
has been so complete as it is in our own civilization, characterized as it is by the 
super-specialization due to the employment of machinery and its logical outcome 
in mass production. 


To begin with, the individual with the innate capacity to make things can make 
anything within the scope permitted by his circumstances. The great artists of the 
Renaissance were not freaks, or even exceptions, except in degree. Leonardo, 
Michael Angelo, Cellini could turn their hands, and their minds to anything. In the 
chronicles of the Hebrews we are told of more than one craftsman who was able 


....to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver and in brass, and in 
cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of 
workmanship. 


This was probably a set formula to describe such an artist as those mentioned 
above, a master workman; and, as Mr. Briggs points out, the qualifications that 
Vitruvius desiderates make it 


. . . evident that an architect was expected to be at least a Jack-of-all-trades, if not 
an Admirable Crichton, 


under the Roman Empire. 



From what we now know of the evolution of culture, it can be actually shown that 
trades and professions to use our terms were differentiated along different lines in 
different periods and places. Societies develop like living organisms, and 
specialized occupations come into existence and are transformed into something 
else in obedience to growth and changes in the whole body politic, whether the unit 
be large or small. Specialization is a characteristic of organized society, it is 
developed partly through the differences in aptitude in gifted individuals, but much 
more by the inertia of the habits of the mediocre majority. The larger the unit of 
society becomes, the more specialization is found as a general rule. In a pioneer 
settlement every man learns by necessity to do almost everything required. In a 
modern city there is hardly a person who makes or does anything in its entirety 
excepting perhaps those we call "artists" and even they seldom, even for 
affectation's sake, make the instruments of their art for themselves. 


WHO WERE THE MEDIAEVAL ARCHITECTS? 


This being so, the search for the men who functioned as architects do now is beset 
with additional difficulties. While reason compels us to acknowledge that every 
great building must have had its master workman, its "chief carpenter" if we take 
the word architect in its primary signification, where are we to look for him in any 
given case? Was he a professional man or an artisan? Was he solely a designer and 
superintendent, or was he also a craftsman? Was he trained specially or did he 
emerge from the rank and file owing to chance or superior ability? But these 
questions cannot be answered till we have first investigated the structure of the 
social organism and the lines of cleavage, or of development, which specialization 
followed. For example, the College of Pontifices of ancient Rome by their name 
were bridge builders did they ever build bridges? Were they responsible originally 
for the sacred bridge over the Tiber, and then through the magical and religious 
ceremonies annually carried out in connection with it gradually evolve into a body 
of priests? We cannot say, for priests they were as far back as even legend goes, 
only the incongruous name is left to excite our curiosity. In our own days we have 
seen the village blacksmith developing first into a mender of bicycles and then into 
a garage man. It is clear then that when we go seeking the architect in history we 
must beware of looking only for a man with a "professional" training, receiving 
"fees" instead of wages, and limiting himself entirely to the making of plans and 
superintending their execution. This state of affairs is not a necessary one, it is not 



dictated by the nature of things, however natural it may seem to us. Really it is 
quite an arbitrary arrangement, and many other possible divisions and 
combinations of functions are possible for those who build, and it is probable that 
at some time or other during past ages most of them have actually been in effect. 


It will follow also that from different allocations of function and specialization 
modes of training will vary likewise. At bottom there are only two ways of 
learning an art, that of apprenticeship and that of pupillage or in other words of the 
workshop and of the school. And really in essentials these are the same, only in the 
one the apprentice is made as useful as possible in real work, he learns new things 
as occasion calls for them in that work. In the school, on the other hand, the work 
is only an exercise and is otherwise without purpose, while the training is 
systematic and the time required is thereby shortened. We today tend more and 
more to teach everything by the method of the school, it has manifest advantages, 
but what is not always realized, it has disadvantages, too. One constant tendency is 
for the school to drift away from practice, and become an end in itself. 


PROFESSION OR CRAFT? 


We may reasonably assume that in the past the designers and superintendents of 
great and important edifices were trained as apprentices, except where there are 
specific grounds to suppose the contrary. In some form or other this is the natural 
way for youth to learn how to work. But there is one thing which seems to be 
almost everywhere taught only, or chiefly in schools, and that is reading and 
writing. In such primitive modes as the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the cuneiform 
alphabets of Mesopotamia and the ideograms of Chinese, to learn to read and write 
is a long and arduous process, and is indeed an occupation in itself. On account of 
the importance of records to government, the scribe is inevitably brought into close 
contact with the chiefs and rulers of the community, and almost as inevitably tends 
to share in administration. Thus the knowledge of letters becomes almost 
everywhere the equivalent of a profession. 



As however alphabets were simplified the time necessary to become "literate" is 
reduced, and a tendency is then observable for all upper classes to learn to read and 
write, and from that naturally to gain acquaintance with what has been recorded in 
writing in the past. Thus literacy becomes a mark or test of social rank and the 
status of an occupation may be judged by the fact that those who follow it are or 
are not able to read and write. Historically this is the basis of the difference 
between those occupations we call professions and those designated crafts and 
trades. A lawyer or physician must be able to read and write, a carpenter or 
blacksmith may be illiterate and yet a perfectly competent workman. 


From this criterion, rather than from the confusing records of the value of his 
remuneration in wages or fees, we may judge the status of the architect in ancient 
times. The architects of ancient Greece were not only able to read, but very 
frequently themselves wrote books on the subject of their profession. And under 
the Roman Empire, as has been already mentioned, Vitruvius insists that the 
architect should have a thorough general education, the equivalent in fact of 
university training today. Even in the Middle Ages when literacy was rather the 
mark of the ecclesiastic than of the gentleman there are indications that architects 
not infrequently had this qualification; which raises quite a number of questions 
that in the preset state of our knowledge would not be altogether easy to answer. 


APPRECIATION OF BEAUTY IN THE PAST 


The fact that architects in ancient times were modern enough to write books about 
their work brings up another problem. What were their ideals? What was their 
conception of their work? Did they distinguish architecture from "mere building?" 
There is a disposition in some quarters to suppose that they did not. Mr. Briggs 
quotes a recent author, F.P. Chambers, who does not believe the Greek artist had 
"any highly developed aesthetic gifts" and he bases his opinion on the fact that 
such descriptions of buildings as have come down to us are concerned only with 
their size, materials and cost. Mr. Briggs tells us that he finds it difficult to accept 
such a radical view; although later on he is himself inclined to emphasize the 
absence in existing records of any reference to aesthetic feelings or ideals among 
mediaeval craftsmen. This really opens up the whole problem of aesthetics, and its 
relations to the other departments of human activity, far too big a subject to be 



discussed parenthetically. Nevertheless certain things must be taken into 
consideration in order to fully appreciate the position of the architect. It is highly 
probable that many races, perhaps most peoples below a certain cultural level, have 
no conscious idea of seeking for beauty for its own sake. Possibly it was the Greek 
mind that first considered and discussed the idea of beauty as a thing by itself. It is 
also possible true, that except in a highly self-conscious civilization, men never do 
clearly distinguish beauty from fitness or adaptation to an end. But even if all this 
be granted it is a very different thing from saying that there is no perception of the 
difference between a beautiful object and one that is not, even when each is equally 
well adapted for some utilitarian purpose. This appreciation may be expressed not 
in aesthetic terms at all but in those of construction or value. And here we have as 
an added difficulty the curious or, if one will, significant fact that the object that is 
perfectly fitted to its purpose is usually, or seems so to us, beautiful in its own 
right. It is also rather significant that words that have come to be used to designate 
the idea of beauty in its various kinds and degrees seem, in their origin, to mean 
either good or valuable, well made, finished or perfected, or else desirable or 
pleasing. This implies that the conscious discrimination of beauty is a secondary 
development, as on general grounds is to be expected, but it also implies that, 
vague and indeterminate as the feeling was, it was nevertheless a powerful factor 
in all creative arts. 


In regard to the craftsmen of ancient Greece, and their patrons also, it might well 
be argued that they did not speak of beauty in the things they made and the 
structures they reared for the simple reason that it was taken for granted, seeing 
that there was nothing made by them that was not beautiful. A parallel might here 
be drawn with Japan so far as it is untouched by occidental influences. There too 
we find a people whose humblest handicraftsmen work and feel as artists. In fact 
the dictum of Lao Tse might be quoted that when people begin to concern 
themselves with names it is because they have lost the things, when they begin to 
speak of virtues it is because they are no longer virtuous; so we might say that our 
theories of aesthetics and our discussions as to the essential difference between an 
art and a trade, an artist and an artisan, are due to the lamentable fact that the world 
we have made for ourselves to live in is by no means altogether a beautiful one. 


Just as we cannot believe that the elegant proportions of Greek monuments simply 
happened by chance, without intention on the part of the builders or appreciation 



on that of the beholders, so it is impossible to conceive that the craftsman of the 
Middle Ages did not find pleasure in the achievement of his work. Perhaps it was 
not always fully appreciated for not a little of it was so placed that it was almost 
impossible for it to be even seen by anyone not armed with a ladder, or powerful 
glasses, had such aids to vision then been known. The Mediaeval Mason may have 
been quarrelsome at times, and indolent so are some artists. He may at times have 
scamped his work when it did not interest him. He may have put nothing 
concerning the proportions or the elegance or beauty of the buildings he erected 
into the accounts and contracts relating to them we would not find much aesthetic 
appreciation in such documents today but he must have had some feeling about 
these things, and a more or less definitely conscious purpose to embody them in his 
work, even if he had not many words for discussing them. 


Mr. Briggs gives a list of what he calls fallacies concerning the Mediaeval architect 
that are very widely accepted as fact. They are enumerated in condensed form, as 
follows: 


There was no independent director or architect. 


Control was exercised by an artisan, not by "an educated professional man." 


No plans or working drawings were used. 


Design was purely traditional, nothing being borrowed from other countries or 
earlier times. 


The Masons worked purely for the Glory of God and not for a living. 



The "Master Mason" was confined to one job at a time, that he "learned his trade at 
a bench, and not in an office or school," that he was usually a monk, and that he 
gloried in being anonymous. 


It would seem rather sweeping to call these points all entirely fallacious, they seem 
to be on very different levels in that regard, and indeed Mr. Briggs qualifies the 
statement in the next paragraph where he says: 


It cannot be denied that some of these fallacies have a foundation in fact; but it is 
equally certain that they are inaccurate when used as sweeping generalizations. 


A fallacy with a foundation in fact sounds a bit paradoxical, but taking the 
statement as a whole it is clear enough what is meant. These commonly received 
propositions are certainly fallacious if offered as a full presentation of the facts. 
The author discusses them in order and it will be convenient to follow him in this. 
With regard to the first "fallacy" it would seem as if everyone must agree on sober 
thought. There must have been an architect in control at the erection of every 
building of any importance, in the Middle Ages as at any other period, that is, so 
long as we stick to Mr. Briggs' definition of architect one who makes plans and 
supervises their execution. At least planning and superintendence there must have 
been by some one. No art was ever produced by a committee, and the theory of 
control by a school or a guild is even more possible. That men of one school, with 
a like training, will understand each other better, and so need less directing and 
instruction must be granted, but the very feature dwelt on by enthusiasts, the 
apparent spontaneity of the greatest examples of Gothic architecture is in truth an 
indication of the completeness and adequacy of the control of the master mind. 
Incidentally the author quotes Prof. Hamilton Thomson as ridiculing the Comacine 
theory. He is one of those who incline to the derivation of Comacinus from 
macinus, a mason; co-macini being merely associate or associated masons. 


A number of other authorities on architecture are also quoted, who in their 
laborious and comprehensive researches have found no trace of the existence of the 
legendary "travelling Gilds of Freemasons," Prof. Prior indeed saying: 



This guild, if it existed, must also have had a supernatural power of hiding its 
tracks, for in all our accounts and records are no references which can be twisted 
into a consciousness of a Freemason guild. 


But here again we must make sure we know exactly what is the "subject of 
discourse." Prof. Prior and the other authorities quoted cannot be understood as 
denying that there were guilds and other associations of Masons and other 
craftsmen concerned with building, for that would be to imply that they had not 
even superficially made themselves acquainted with the evidence. What they deny 
is the often repeated statement that the builders of the Gothic cathedrals throughout 
Europe were a closely organized body of men, acting under a highly centralized 
control, like an army, and like an army sent hither and yon without reference to 
national frontiers at the behest of the authorities of the Church. 


On the other hand the organizations that we know did certainly exist, do seem to 
have had a faculty, if not a supernatural one, of keeping themselves very much in 
the background. Indeed we might say that it is in some sort only by accident that 
evidence of the existence of the associated Steinmetzen gilds in Germany, the 
Compagnonnage in France, and the Freemasons in Britain came to be known to the 
world at large a world never very much interested in the matter it may be added. 


WAS THE FREEMASON A MERE MECHANIC? 


After a rather lengthy but valuable discussion of the terms used for the person 
exercising the functions of architect, and having arrived at the conclusion that in 
England the most usual one was "Master Mason," Mr. Briggs comes to his second 
"fallacy" that the mason was an artisan rather than an artist or professional man. 

But here it would seem that supporters of both the opposing views are thinking in 
terms of the present day divisions of labor. With us a profession is entered 
deliberately. A young man decides to be an engineer, architect, artist or sculptor, 
and he trains for that career from the beginning. Mr. Briggs justly concludes that as 



the Master Masons, or at least those who had ability and had gained some 
reputation, were clothed and treated as gentlemen, they therefore held a position 
equivalent to professional status. But it does not follow from this that they started 
with that status, or even the expectation of it, as a "gentleman apprentice" does in a 
modern engineering works. The author hardly comes squarely to grips with this 
point. It would seem to be something like the evolution of the merchant or 
manufacturer. As soon as he is doing business on a large enough scale, he ascends 
out of the ranks of humble trades-people and shop-keepers, and enters more or less 
easily the upper circles of society. 


For those who scorn the "mere mechanic" it must again be repeated that from the 
Renaissance on the artisan was depressed, those who controlled and employed him 
ceased to have the same training, which inevitably caused deterioration in the 
initiative and inventive powers of the craftsman and the quality of the apprentices. 
The Mediaeval Mason was a sculptor almost as much as he was a stone cutter, and 
while the master workman must have laid down the general plans, and the type and 
scope of the mouldings and carving, it is practically impossible that he could have 
designed it all in detail the work itself proves that he did not in many cases. 
Doubtless he often said what it was he wanted here or there; but as the modem 
architect leaves details to subordinates, so did his predecessor the Master Mason. 


In regard to plans and drawings the contention that none were used at all is absurd. 
But the author admits that it is hardly possible that they were made in such detail, 
or so exactly as they would be today. He says justly that the only explanation 
possible of such a method of building as that proposed would be "the inability of 
the Master Mason to draw" plans. That a man able to design a building and with 
the training of a carver and sculptor should be unable to draw plans would be a 
contention too absurd for anyone to make. But, what settles the matter, we not only 
have contemporary references to plans and plots and draughts and models, but a 
good number of them are still in existence. The interesting portrait of Master Eudes 
de Montreuil, architect to the King of France, which is here reproduced, shows him 
at work upon a plan drawn upon a roll of vellum, with scale, pencils and drawing 
pens and inkstand beside it. An interesting fact is noted from Salzmann's English 
Industries of the Middle Ages that does not seem to have gained the attention of 
Masonic scholars. This is that there was, at times at least, an adjunct to the working 
lodge of the masons which was called the "trasour" or "tracyng house," which must 



have been the equivalent of the modem drawing office. Another author, F. deMely, 
states that in France the working drawings were made at the site while the building 
was in progress, and that they were made on slabs of plaster. This is a confirmation 
of the suggestions made in the Study Club last year (BUILDER, January, 1927) 
that a surface of plaster would serve very well for laying out details full size. 


The remainder of the fallacies may be dealt with more summarily. The question of 
tradition is one in which misapprehension easily arises, as it is not a clearly defined 
term. Gothic art was traditional as compared with the ecclecticism of the present 
time, but within certain limits there was never a more original, inventive, daring 
school of art in the history of mankind. The tradition indeed made for freedom; the 
one thing, it would seem, that the Mediaeval Craftsman could not do, whether he 
was mason, carpenter, painter, Wordsmith or armorer, pewterer or goldsmith, was 
to copy or reproduce anything exactly. Everything made had in it at least so much 
of novelty or originality that it was made rather by eye than by strict measurement 
which does not at all mean that the craftsman was unable to make accurate 
measurements when he wanted or needed to do so. 


For the rest, the Mediaeval Mason was just like other people, he worked possibly 
with interest and pleasure, but certainly for his living, and for fame and reputation. 
When he had proved his ability and had gained reputation he was often employed 
as a supervisor or consultant, and not infrequently had charge of a number of 
buildings at once. So far from being always a monk or cleric, after, possibly, the 
earliest period, he was generally a layman. He probably did learn his craft at the 
bench, but he learned to draw plans on the drawing floor, or on parchment in the 
"tracyng house," and finally he was as normally pleased at having his abilities and 
his work recognized as other people. 


Mr. Briggs' book is made more useful and interesting by the many illustrations 
which are given, several of which have been reproduced in addition to the one 
already mentioned. The drawing of the porch of Regensburg Cathedral should 
settle once for all the question of plans and working drawings. It is a bit of work 
that no modern draughtsman would be ashamed of. The drawing of scaffolding for 
the erection of a dome is most interesting. It is later than our period strictly 
speaking. The solidity and the care for safety evidenced by the handrails are hardly 



what might have been expected. By the way it is put together it seems more like a 
permanent structure than temporary work. 


The drawing of the apprentice bracket at Gloucester Cathedral was made by the 
author himself, and may be compared with that published a good many years ago 
in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (Vol. xii, p. 59). It is supposed to commemorate the 
death of the master's apprentice due to a fall from a scaffold. The bracket has no 
apparent use, and in its outline takes the form of a square, which in itself is a 
curious and perhaps significant fact. 


— o — 


The Gebalites 


By BRO. D.E.W. WILLIAMSON, Nevada 


And the land of the Giblites, and all Lebanon toward the sunrising. Joshua, xiii:5 


And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the Gebalites did fashion them. I 
Kings, v: 1 8 (R. V.). 


And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stone- 
squarers. I Kings, v:18 (A. V.). 


The ancients of Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee thy calkers. Ezekiel, 
xxvii:9. 



THREE thousand Moslems answer the Muezzin's call to prayer today in the 
decayed old town of Jebeil on the Syrian coast three thousand, of whom not one 
knows that the broken columns in the vineyards and the ruins within the walls tell 
of what was once regarded as the oldest inhabited spot on earth. This is the Gebal 
of the Bible, the Gubla of the Assyrians, the Byblos of the Greeks, whence the 
Gebalites came who aided King Solomon in building the temple at Jerusalem, and 
long centuries before Solomon's time it was the KPNY of the Egyptian 
inscriptions. (1) In later years it was regarded by all Phoenicia with the same 
veneration that Moslems of modern times have for Mecca and until well within the 
Christian era was visited by thousands. But among its natives it remained Gebal or 
Gubla; and thirteen centuries after Christ, although in the meantime it had been 
under the rule of Roman and Byzantine emperors, Persians and Arabs and Turks, 
when the Crusaders captured it in 1103 they found a city there still recognizable 
under the name of Giblet as the same once visited in the dim past by Egyptians 
before the Pyramids were built. Today, as Jebeil, it is but slightly altered in its 
sound. 


Once this city-state, independent from its earliest existence, and governed by its 
own prince, until Pompey seized it and beheaded Cinyras, the last of them, was to 
have been the inheritance of the Israelites as part of the Promised Land, for it is 
included in the account of "the land that yet remaineth" in the Book of Joshua 
[xiii:5], but the Israelites stopped long before they reached the sea and the next that 
is heard of the Gebalites (Giblim) is when it is stated in 1 Kings v: 1 8 that 
"Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the Gebalites did fashion them (the 
heavy stones), and prepared the timber and the stones to build the house." This is 
the wording of the Revised Version. The King James's version says "stone- 
squarers" instead of Gebalites, the older translaters having confused the word Gibli 
with one greatly resembling it, which will be explained during the course of this 
article, but they took care to make a marginal note in which they gave the 
alternative meaning "or Giblites." The error is principally interesting to Masons 
because, owing doubtless to the original misinterpretation in the Authorized 
Version of the Bible and not understanding the marginal reference, those who 
devised one of the advanced degrees in Freemasonry adopted Giblim (Giblem) as a 
significant word. It is also interesting because it seems to have led to so eminent a 
scholar as D. G. Hogarth's speaking, in the Encyclopedia Britannica, of these 
people as being noted for stone-cutting and ship-building, when as a matter of fact 



there is no ancient Egyptian, Babylonian or Hebrew authority for imagining that 
they had anything whatever to do with stonecutting up to the time of the temple or 
long after, if ever. They were shipbuilders and a maritime people, and it is 
characteristic of the unchanging East that their successors in the town, not 
improbably their very descendants, are still said to find a livelihood in the sea. 


GEBAL AND EGYPT 


The maritime character of Gebal had been recognized for centuries, and it had long 
been believed, from the importance of Byblos (Gebal, Gubla) in the Osiris myth, 
that it was to this point that Snefru, last king of the third dynasty in Egypt (about 
2900 B.C.), sent forty ships as stated on the monuments. (2) Egyptologists had 
agreed that in this or the following dynasty 


Egyptians established themselves on the coast of Canaan and had a colony in a port 
which was in maritime relation to the coast of Asia Minor. (3) 


This belief was fully justified when in 1921 and following years, M. Montet, the 
noted French archaeologist, found the remains of an Egyptian temple on a site that 
appears to have been a sanctuary even before the first Egyptian dynasty. The 
connection was kept up throughout the Old Kingdom until the temple was badly 
damaged by fire in the time of Pepi I (2575 B. C.) and the last traces are lost with 
Pepi II, who came to the throne in 2535 B. C. The ships that were sent to Punt 
(supposedly the present Somali land) in the Old Kingdom were called Byblos- 
ships, which Frankfort thinks may have been because of their being built of wood 
from Lebanon, obtained at Byblos. (4) There seems to have been a long period of 
centuries during which the tie between Byblos and Egypt was forgotten; but at 
some time after the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt, probably under the 
pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty, it may be deduced from the report of 
Wenamon, that the princes of Byblos again recognized the supremacy of Egypt. 
Wenamon was sent by Hrihor, high priest of Amon in the reign of the decadent 
Rameses XII [about 1 100 B. C.], to obtain cedar of Lebanon for the repair of the 
sacred barge of Amon at Thebes. He was robbed of his money and credentials by a 



prince of the Thekel, one of the Philistine tribes, and was subjected to many 
humiliations before obtaining his timbers. He succeeded in his errand only by 
recalling to the King of Byblos the manner in which that prince's ancestors had 
dealt with the Egyptian pharaohs in the past and the greatness of the god Amon, 
which those ancestors had admitted. Wenamon's account leaves the impression of 
Byblos as a great marine city with a prince whose power was widely 
acknowledged, for when wrecked in Cyprus and his vessel seized, he threatens the 
Cyprian queen that should the crew be killed by her subjects the prince of Gebal 
will seize and kill ten crews of hers. The effect of the threat is not known because 
the rest of the papyrus is lost. (5) But Wenamon was not the only Egyptian to feel 
the contempt of the Gebalite princes, as is indicated by the fact that forty years 
before his time a body of envoys sent by the pharaoh to Byblos were detained there 
until they all had died some seventeen years later. 


Less than three hundred years prior to Wenamon's misadventures a very different 
condition of affairs presents itself to the reader, for then a prince of Gebal paid 
generous tribute to a ruler of Egypt who happened to be that strange figure in 
ancient history, the arch heretic Akhenaton [1375-1358 B. C.], and despite all his 
pleading the Phoenician prince got nothing in return. It is an especially interesting 
historical period because in the Khabiri, who now appear as invading Syria and 
Palestine, overcoming old cities and seizing upon territories, Egyptologists think 
they perceive the Aramaeans, a Semitic people closely related to the Israelites; and 
some writers even go so far as to see in them the Hebrews, themselves. There is 
certainly a close similarity in the two names, for the first letter in the word Hebrew 
in the original is "ayin," which has no English equivalent but which at that time 
probably was a clearly enunciated aspirate, which may have made the name of the 
Hebrews sound as if written Kibri. Be that as it may, in 1 890 several hundred clay 
tablets were found at Tell el Amarna on the Nile 190 miles above Cairo and were 
brought to Sir Flinders Petrie. (6) On being deciphered they turned out to be state 
documents, principally letters to the Egyptian ruler Akhenaton, and to his father, 
from the kings of Babylon, Assyria and elsewhere, and from the Egyptian 
governors in Syria, telling of the revolt in progress in Syria against Egyptian rule. 
The advance of the Khabiri was causing many of the Egyptian governors to desert 
to the new power. 



In one of these letters, Ribaddi, prince of Gebal and apparently Egyptian governor 
general for Northern Phoenicia, opens the correspondence by telling of the 
disastrous invasion of the Khabiri and complaining of the disloyalty of a certain 
Abdashirtas. The latter writes asking that Ribaddi be superseded as governor and 
protesting his own faithfulness. Zimridi, governor of Zisu, writes that all the 
Egyptian cities except Sidon have been taken by the Khabiri. Akhenaton does not 
appear to understand the situation for he tells Ribaddi to send ships and protect the 
coast cities, but Ribaddi replies that he cannot because now it is the Khatti (the 
once mysterious Hittites) who are attacking and plundering his lieges, and in 
another letter he warns the pharaoh that the Khabiri will soon have all the land 
unless troops are sent and that Sidon has already gone over to the Mitanni and the 
Khatti. His unanswered letters extend over five years, and tell of a tragedy in 
which Gebal finally falls after Ribaddi has seen the people sell their children for 
food to Yarimatu (which Petrie locates as Laodicea, the modern Latakia, famous 
for its tobacco), has witnessed the sale of his own son and daughters and the ruin of 
himself and his family. During his absence in Beirut, it is a significant indication of 
the independence of the people of his city that they address a letter in their own 
name, "the people of Gubla," to the pharaoh, asking for succor. His own end is not 
known, but he was probably executed by the Amizu. who took the town. 


THE GODS OF GEBAL 


Hundreds of years went by. In the nearby Palestine, David created a great Jewish 
kingdom and the magnificent Solomon reigned after him, [building the temple to 
which, probably as allies of Hiram of Tyre and Sidon, the Gebalites sent 
construction experts. Then the Jewish kingdom was rent and ultimately destroyed. 
But during all these years Gebal grew in wealth and importance, especially as a 
great religious shrine. In its earliest years Gebal worshipped a female goddess; this 
cannot be questioned, for Ribaddi in one of his letters to Akhenaton says: "May the 
Goddess of Gebal give power to the King." The stele of Jehawmelek, king of 
Gebal, found in the ruins of the town, shows that the chief deity at or before this 
time was Ba'alit, the feminine form of a city god (ba'al), and the strong probability 
is that this was one of the forms of the Great Mother of the Gods, combining the 
attributes of Cybele and Astarte (Ishtar), who was worshipped in all Mediterranean 
cities and surrounding territories, and who was the chief goddess of those ancient 
cities of Crete the ruins of which have been excavated by Evans. But even in the 



earliest times there was associated with the Great Mother a male god of 
subordinate importance, variously known as Attis, Atys, Tammuz and by the 
Greeks as Adonis. In some way this originally subordinate deity became, in course 
of time, the more important of the two at Gebal (which it may be necessary again 
to say is the same as Byblos) and it is possible that there may have been at least at 
first some association with the myth of Osiris, but it is as Adonis that this male 
deity becomes the great god of Byblos. Close by is the river Adonis (now Nahr al- 
Ibrahim), which in the spring of the year, at the beginning of the rains, runs red 
(owing it is believed to the red earth through which it flows in its course), and the 
people of Syria believed that it was discolored by the blood of the god. His 
worship was widespread, even in Judea, for it is Ezekiel who says: 


Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house toward the north, 
and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. (7) 


Tammuz was the real name of this god, it may be pointed out, and Adonis, his 
Greek designation, is simply the Semitic Adonat, "lord," by which title he was 
generally called. 


There is some Masonic interest in this worship of Adonis (Tammuz) at Byblos 
because several writers on the mysteries of Masonry have thought that they saw a 
close resemblance between the rites of the Syrian god at Gebal and those of the 
Craft. Says Mackey: 


There must evidently have been a very intimate connection between . . . the 
workmen of the first temple and the inhabitants of Byblos, the seat of the 
Adonisian mysteries. (8) 


And he goes on: 



The enquiring Mason will readily see the analogy of the symbolism that exists 
between Adonis of the mysteries of the Gebalites at Byblos and Hiram the Builder 
in his own institution. 


Investigation, however, shows that the resemblance is meagre. According to one 
version, Adonis was killed by a boar, according to another he killed himself. 
Aphrodite mourned so much at his loss that the gods of the lower world (Hades) 
permitted him to return to the face of the earth for six months every year, the other 
six months to be spent with Persephone in Hades. The ceremonies are baldly 
described by Matemus Julius Firmicus (346 A. D.), who in his De erroribus 
profanarum religionum say that 


on a certain night while the ceremonies of the adonia lasted an image was laid out 
on a bed and bewailed dolefully. After long lamentations light was brought in; then 
the mouths of the mourners were annointed by the priest who whispered: "Trust ye, 
holy ones, in your restored god, whose pains have procured our salvation." Upon 
which their sorrow was turned to joy. (9) 


The account given by Philo, a Hellenist writer of the first century of this era, shows 
that the affair was not so quiet. In truth the ceremonies were sexual orgies without 
any restraint. In The Golden Bough Fraser has given a complete description of the 
rites in which it would be quite impossible to detect the faintest similarity to any 
Masonic ceremony. (10) He bases his account on Lucian's well-known Syrian 
Goddess. 


GIBLIM AND STONE SQUARERS 


How the translaters of King James's Version of the Bible happened to select 
" stone- squarers" for Giblim is quite easily explained. First, they knew nothing 
about Gebal, in all probability. The word, by the way, is regarded by Hebraists as a 
possible corruption of the true sound, which it is likely was as if written Gubb-la. 



Second, there is in Hebrew a word GBL, which means to bound, to border (there 
are no vowels in the original Hebrew writings). So they probably reasoned that the 
Hebrew WYGBLWM meant (as Thenius actually renders it) "and they bordered 
them," which they would consider to mean "bordered the stones," i. e. squared 
them, and therefore they were " stone- squarers." In his German translation, Luther 
made no such error but gives the German equivalent of the Hebrew as die Giblim. 
The Vulgate of Jerome says: Porto Giblii praeparavant ligna et lapides, etc. Indeed, 
Jerome says in his version that the masons (caementarii) of Solomon and of Hiram 
only hewed the stones. "Then," as he puts it, "the Giblites prepared the timbers and 
stones." The original translaters into Greek evidently decided that their Hebrew 
copy of the original must mean something different from Gebalites, because they 
took a Greek word of similar sound and wrote "kai ebalon" (and laid), making the 
verse read: "And the sons of Solomon and the sons of Hiram hewed and laid them" 
(referring to "the great and costly stones" of the previous verse in the Greek 
version). The sense is not very clear in the original, anyone will be candid enough 
to admit, but one thing is plain, which is that not on the Egyptian monuments, not 
on the stele of Jehawmelek, not on any Phoenician inscription, not in the Egyptian 
papyri and certainly not in the Tell el Amama letters, is there any reference to 
Gebal as the home of stone-cutters and the record shows that the weight of 
authority is against so translating the verse in Kings. And it is purely as 
shipbuilders that they are referred to by Ezekiel in his twenty-seventh chapter. 


NOTES 


(1) Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. XI, 308. 

(2) Breasted "History of Egypt," 260, 115. 

(3) Sayce, “Ancient Egypt" (magazine), 1923, p 98. 

(4) Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. X, 80 87 

(5) Breasted, "History of Egypt," 513 et seq. 

(6) The Tell el Amarna letters have been translated in full by Hugo Winckler and 
there is a useful summary by Sir Flinders Petrie published under the title "Syria 
and Egypt," London, 1898. 



(7) Ezekiel viii: 14. 

(8) Mackey's Revised Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 22, "Mysteries of Adonis." 

(9) Quoted in Taylor's "Diegesis" and by Jastrow in "History of Religion." 

(10) "The Golden Bough" (one volume edition), 335 et seq. 

— o — 

EDITORIAL 

R.J. MEEKREN, Editor in Charge 
E.E. Thiemeyer, Research Editor 

BOARD OF EDITORS 

LOUIS BLOCK, Iowa 
ROBERT I. CLEGG, Illinois 
GILBERT W. DAYNES, England 
RAY V. DENSLOW, Missouri 
GEORGE H. DERN, Utah 
N.W.J. HAYDON, Canada 
R.V. HARRIS, Canada 
C. C. HUNT, Iowa 



CHARLES F. IRWIN, Pennsylvania 
A. L. KRESS, Pennsylvania 
F. H. LITTLEFIELD, Missouri 
JOSEPH E. MORCOMBE, California 
ARTHUR C. PARKER, New York 
J. HUGO TATSCH, Iowa 
JESSE M. WHITED, California 
DAVID E. W WILLIAMSON Nevada 


ANOTHER PLAN OF ACTION 


DURING the past few years THE BUILDER has undertaken to chronicle the 
progress of the effort to secure hospitalization and home relief for tuberculous 
Freemasons, and the story of this movement makes interesting reading. 


From its inception in 1921 in the Grand Lodge of Texas, up to the present time, it 
has been a record of which. American Freemasonry cannot be proud, for it has 
demonstrated the apparent impossibility of united action by American Grand 
Lodges in any national program, no matter how worthy the purpose. There can be 
no advantage in discussing the why and wherefore of this fact, but the fact remains 


From more than one quarter has come the suggestion that Freemasons, 
individually, should undertake to do that which the Fraternity as an organization, 
or organizations, cannot or will not do. Many precedents exist for such action. 
Many bodies have been formed, and exist, through which Freemasons carry on 
certain work, or seek recreation, because the Fraternity does not actually meet 



these particular needs. Among such organizations the Shrine and the Grotto will 
occur to everyone at once. 


It seems, therefore, that other and perhaps more serious-minded brethren can, if 
they so desire, create an agency which may provide for the needs of worthy 
brethren in distress, in addition to and supplementing the aid which may be given 
by the Masonic Lodge, and we believe there are many brethren throughout the 
United States who will gladly support a movement of this kind whose primary 
object would be the relief of the sick and tuberculous Mason. 


In our consideration of this problem we have learned that some Texas brethren 
have anticipated us and over four years ago, despairing of securing united action 
through official channels, formed an association of Freemasons for the relief of the 
sick and needy, under the name of the Order of the Hospital of St. John, with the 
special purpose of providing for the migratory tuberculous brethren who seek the 
healing climate of the Southwest. 


Before this association had had time to function in any large way, the Committee 
of the Grand Lodge of New Mexico advised some of the Texas brethren of their 
intention to secure a Charter for the National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria 
Association and through it to seek the active assistance of the Masonic bodies of 
the United States in meeting the problem. The newly-formed Order determined to 
"mark time" and await the result of the effort to be put forth by the Grand Lodge of 
New Mexico through its incorporated tuberculosis sanatoria association. 


With the result of that effort readers of THE BUILDER are familiar, and nothing 
further on that score need be said here. The Masonic Tuberculosis Association, as 
an agency of the Grand Lodge of New Mexico, will renew the appeal to all the 
Masonic bodies of the United States for financial assistance, without any 
obligation or responsibility for management or continuous support for tuberculosis 
relief work. Such support will be forthcoming to some extent, but it is doubtful if it 
will be of sufficient volume to finance the building or purchase of a hospital. The 



work will probably be limited to home relief and hospitalization in existing 
institutions. 


The leaders in the organization above referred to have therefore determined that 
the time has come to resume activity, and to renew the effort to enlist in their ranks 
such Freemasons, and others, who may be in sympathy with the movement to 
provide for the needs of the sick and afflicted among their brethren and who wish 
to serve them actively as did the Samaritan of the Scriptures. To all such the Order 
of the Hospital of St. John extends an invitation to enlist for the service of 
humanity. 


The June issue of THE BUILDER will carry details of the plans and purposes of 
the Order formed over four years ago and now entering upon a field of national 
usefulness. We believe that the new Order of St. John will provide the avenue or 
the agency through which those who are interested in the relief and hospitalization 
of our sick and needy, especially our tubercular brethren, can at last unite and 
render constructive service. 


* * * 


PROPER SUBJECTS 


THERE is a question that is very seldom explicitly brought up, and that possibly 
has never been fully discussed in all its bearings, which seems rather curious 
seeing how nearly it touches the interests of a large number of Masons. The 
question is, what is proper to be published in a Masonic periodical? 


Put thus in its simplest form it implies the further question, what subjects are 
improper in such a publication? And also on what grounds is such propriety, or 



lack of it, to be judged? It is when the last questions are asked that uncertainties 
begin to arise, for it is probable that most would think the answer to the question in 
its primary form too simple and obvious to need any consideration. Almost any 
Mason would be ready to give an answer as to what should be done in any given 
case, but would hardly know what to say if pressed for reasons, or at least for 
general rules on which his reasons could be based. 


Historically there has always existed an element in the Craft averse to any 
publication at all of things referring to Masonry. Even the printing of the 
Constitutions seems to have been regarded in 1723 as a dangerous innovation, 
coming close to a violation of the Landmarks. In many countries there is strong 
objection to the publication of any information about lodges or their membership, 
excepting only in official proceedings and the like, and in many jurisdictions this is 
a matter of definite regulation, with serious penalties for any infringement of the 
rule. There has been, however, a steady evolution in this matter and probably those 
who object in principle to the printing of Masonic books and journals are now in a 
very small minority. 


The objection of such ultra-Conservatives must command our respect, though 
obviously we can hardly agree with them. Their position is based on tradition, and 
in an organization that is so essentially traditional as Freemasonry the conservative 
has always a right to be heard. But every organization that is alive, like every 
living organism, must adapt itself to changes in its environment. While we must 
hold to our traditions, we must also modify them where it becomes necessary to do 
so for the greater benefit of the organization. It is needless here to point out how 
greatly traditions have been modified in the last two hundred years, but the change, 
and all it implies, from an operative to a purely speculative fraternity is enough to 
show what is meant. In the face of this transformation the partial lifting of the veil 
of utter reserve and secrecy that is involved in the publication of Masonic books 
and magazines is but a trifling matter. In any case it has been demonstrated by 
experience, that not only has no harm been done to the Craft by such publicity, but 
many and great advantages and benefits have resulted therefrom. Few, if any, 
would seriously advocate the forbidding of all such publication by Grand Lodge 
action. 



Granting then that Masonic publications, whether books or periodicals, are 
legitimate and proper we come to the question with which we started, what 
reserves are to be made in their content, for some reserves there must be. There 
seems little doubt that many Masons would be inclined to take for granted that the 
same rule applies to a Masonic magazine in the choice of subjects as is laid down 
in all our Constitutions in regard to matters discussed in the tiled precincts of a 
lodge. It is a most natural thing to carry these inhibitions over from the one to the 
other, but a very little reflection will show that there is no real parallel. One 
difference is apparent on the most casual consideration, and that is that certain 
things are freely spoken of in lodge that cannot possibly be put into writing, let 
alone into print. If the analogy is incomplete in such important matters as this it 
would seem to have broken down altogether, for after all it is only an analogy. 
With some very few exceptions in the more conservative jurisdictions, there is no 
attempt made whatever, either by official supervision or by regulation, to exercise 
control in the matter. There is just one reserve that necessarily applies to every 
Masonic writer or publicist, just as it does to every Mason in his everyday dealings 
and conversation, and that is the obligation to avoid any revelation of Masonic 
secrets. 


But granting that there is no law of general application regarding the matter, is 
there any recognized convention or rule of propriety by which we may judge what 
is fitting and what is not? And even where some form of official censorship exists, 
by what standards should those, on whom the duty falls to give or withhold 
permission, make their decisions? The more closely we look for something of this 
sort the more difficult it is to answer the question. Naturally a Masonic magazine, 
like all class or specialized periodicals, tends to restrict itself to certain subjects. 
But this is only a particular instance of the general law governing all journals that 
in order to exist they must publish what interests their readers. One does not look 
for material of a purely literary interest in a trade journal, for instance. In an 
engineering periodical, or a medical one, we expect articles on professional 
subjects. Engineers and physicians as individuals have, like everyone else, diverse 
interests of a general character outside their profession but they read their 
professional journals only for information on the common interests of their 
occupation, and go elsewhere for other matters. Every periodical tends in some 
degree to specialization; even those of a general literary character so select their 
material that readers soon know the kind of articles or stories they may expect. It is 
the same, naturally, with Masonic publications, which may properly be put in the 
category of specialist or professional literature. That is to say, Masonic magazines 



may naturally be expected to confine themselves solely to matters connected with 
Masonry. And having said this it might seem that the question has been answered. 


But is the answer more than a verbal one? Has more been done than simply to put 
the question in different phraseology? What are the matters connected with 
Masonry? A trade or professional journal is usually very highly specialized, and 
the limits of its field of interests quite distinctly marked. Are there any such clear 
delimitations in respect to our own subject? Freemasonry can hardly be said to be 
specialized in this sense. It touches the life and intellectual interest of the members 
of the Fraternity on all sides. To mention just a few subjects that have a real or 
adventitious connection with it - Architecture, Mathematics, Ethics, Philosophy, 
Anthropology, History, Occultism and Comparative Religion. In fact it seems to 
open up avenues into every serious interest of human life. 


Naturally such subjects are treated from the standpoint of the Craft as a speculative 
system, if not explicitly at least implicitly. Those who write as Masons for Masons 
may be expected to keep within hail even if they leave the strict limits of Masonry 
- supposing such limits exist, which is at least questionable. So that this restriction 
seems to be one of treatment rather than one of subject. And that is a subjective 
rather than an objective criterion. 


A further question arises: are there any special restrictions on a periodical 
especially devoted to Masonic research which do not apply in other cases? There 
seems to be some misapprehension about this, natural enough in the circumstances. 
The great majority of Masonic students and authors have been concerned 
especially with the history of the Craft, and thus Masonic research has come to be 
almost synonymous with Masonic history, illogical as this really is. In fact any 
subject that has any connection with Freemasonry is a possible subject for 
research. 


It is all a matter of treatment. As has been said there are few major subjects that 
have not some aspect that is of Masonic interest. Everywhere there are mistakes 
and errors to be corrected, new connecting links to be noted, principles to be 



established and different opinions to be discussed. And this equally on the practical 
side as on the purely speculative. Only one kind of thing in general may seem 
inappropriate in a research periodical, what is rather indefinitely included under the 
head of "news." Yet even news, when it is important and of general interest, cannot 
be wholly excluded, for the news of today is the history of tomorrow. 


Thus it would seem that no restrictions can be made before hand, and that the 
governing principle is not limitation of subject but the method of approach. 


— o — 


Masonic Research; What Is It? 


IT is very unfortunate that popular usage has made it necessary to refer to the 
acquiring of Masonic knowledge as Research or Study. To the average person both 
of these words have connotations which are, to say the least, unpleasant. There is 
nothing more natural than for us to associate study with school, and research has 
come to have a meaning which is even deeper than mere study. In other words the 
individual Mason has come to think that in order to learn something about his 
Fraternity he has to return to his school days, that he must almost begin with the 
three R's again. The National Masonic Research Society has doubtless had its part 
in the development of the terms mentioned. It has always been our practice to refer 
to Masonic Research, Masonic Study, Text Books, and in fact to use many other 
terms which are associated with formal study, or words which have little use aside 
from purely educational fields. Equally unfortunate is the fact that there seem to be 
no other words which will convey the meaning it is desired to express to the 
average Mason. The situation is very much like that in which the philosopher finds 
himself. He is limited in his use of words to those which are in the language. 
Occasionally such a man will coin a word of his own, but generally the practice is 
to use a word which is understood by everyone and to assign a meaning to it which 
fits in with the author's own idea of things. It is often necessary to consume pages 
with such definitions. One of the most difficult tasks in writing is to make some 
abstract quality sufficiently concrete for the general reader to grasp the meaning. 



The writer may have a conception of the term in mind, but may be at a loss as to 
how to put that particular idea on paper in an understandable way. This is the 
precise situation in which we find ourselves when we come to discuss Masonic 
education. There is no doubt but that when we mention Masonic Study and 
Research we do mean the acquiring of a Masonic education. That naturally sounds 
like the statement of a professor offering a new course of study. Really that is 
precisely what we are doing, but it is the desire and ambition of the Society, and 
many of those interested in Masonic study to make it an informal course, to make 
it both interesting and entertaining, and above all to divorce the idea from that of 
going to school. Something of what we are trying to accomplish and the way in 
which it may be done will be indicated as we proceed. In this way we hope to show 
that we are really using two terms which have one connotation in general usage 
and quite another when applied to Masonry. 


In the first place research does not necessarily mean the delving into the nooks, 
crannies and out of the way places. That is, of course, what is meant when we refer 
to scientific research. If we speak of a man doing research work in physics, 
chemistry or any of the sciences, we naturally think of him as having acquired all 
of the fundamental knowledge necessary, and having attained that perfection in his 
work which enables him to endeavor to travel a bit farther along than any other 
man has done. It is precisely that idea of working on the outskirts of knowledge 
that makes the difference between Masonic research and other research. In the one 
instance the scientist is attempting to deal with the things outside the realm of all 
human knowledge. But, in another sense, from the very first day he began to study 
his subject, he was doing research work. He was working along the borders of his 
own knowledge, gradually broadening his field, and consequently extending the 
borders of his own knowledge until in his field his knowledge equalled that of 
other people. He then found himself at a point where books were of no real 
assistance to him, and he had to figure things out for himself, because no one had 
previously covered exactly the same ground. 


You would not think of beginning the study of chemistry with technical works on 
radio-activity. You would naturally look for some popular, but authentic work 
dealing with the fundamentals of the subject. Let us look at Masonry in the same 
light. There is no more reason for the seeker after Masonic knowledge looking for 
his elementary training in such works as Mackey and Gould's Histories, or A.Q.C., 



than there is for the chemical novice beginning with the study of atoms and 
electrons. I think it likely that there never was a man who passed through the 
Masonic Initiation who did not find some question raised by the ritual that he 
would like to have answered. The ritual is the foundation, the basis, upon which 
the whole fabric of the Masonic Fraternity is erected. Does not that seem to 
indicate a logical place for a beginning?' 


If, then, we should begin with the ritual, how are we to make the start? The logical 
place to enter into any field is through the gate. If you were going into a pasture 
you would not try to climb the fence, unless that seemed the easiest way to get in. 
Even though it did seem easier than walking a little distance to the gate you might 
find obstacles in the form of barbed wire and torn clothing which would have made 
it easier in the long run to have gone to a little more trouble at first and found the 
entrance. The Masonic ritual is just like a fenced pasture. It has a gate, and it has a 
fence; in other words, you have two methods of approaching it. You may endeavor 
to ascertain its meaning, or you may seek for its origin. It depends largely upon 
where your interests lie which method you follow. It seems to me, however, that 
the gate to the study of Masonic ritual is its meaning; the origin must, therefore, be 
the fence. If you step immediately onto the first rail of the fence, you are likely to 
come away with badly cut hands or tom clothing. It is full of obstacles which will 
discourage your entering through that means. Frankly, we know very little about 
the history of the Masonic ritual except in a very general way. You will constantly 
be mnning up against blank walls, down blind alleys, and you will find that with 
all of your effort you do not cover any great distance. Returning again to the 
pasture simile, you have learned that what seemed the shortest path to your 
objective has been the most difficult after all. 


Suppose now that you walk down the road to the gate and take the smoother way. 
You are anxious to leam something of the meaning of the ceremony. Incidentally it 
may be stated that this is the field of inquiry which becomes apparent to by far the 
larger majority of Masons. There have been more books of a popular nature 
treating this phase of Masonic Study than in any other. Most of them are written in 
such a way that the ordinary individual can read them and thoroughly enjoy their 
contents. This seems, then, the best place for a beginning. It is very foolish to start 
the study of anything with the dryer aspects of the subject. If we begin with the 



more interesting phases we naturally stimulate a desire for knowledge which will 
make the more technical reading interesting, if not actually fascinating. 


This is where general Masonic study differs from ordinary school work. We begin 
where we actually want to begin, we learn those things we want to know, and we 
gain our pleasure through a feeling of satisfaction that we have acquired something 
we really wanted to have. 


It is not, precisely speaking, a satisfaction; it is more of a stimulation. The 
satisfying of our elementary wants leads us to other thoughts. We are anxious to 
know more about this, or that, phase of our subject. Then begins the most 
enjoyable part of research work. When this stage is reached you have a hobby, now 
the only thing left to do is to ride it. Carry it along with you, live with it, think 
about it, read about it. you won't find it hard work, but you will find a welcome 
relaxation from the routine of the day, and even more than that, you will find 
yourself delving into subjects that you may have ridiculed in the past, and doing it 
from pure enjoyment. I can recall very well one experience of my own. When I 
first started reading about Masonry I ridiculed the men who searched through 
musty volumes trying to ascertain whether the letter "a" or the word "or" was used 
in a certain place, and then erecting an argument upon the result. It seemed a 
tedious proposition, the kind of thing that would never interest one, though the 
result did have more than passing interest after someone else had done the work. It 
was not more than a year or two later that I found myself spending hours poring 
over Anderson's First and Second Constitutions with precisely the same object in 
view. Not, of course, looking for just those words, but at any rate trying to learn 
whether Anderson had used the same terms in his second edition as he did in the 
first, was it tedious? Not a bit of it. It was a fascinating job. I had an object in view, 
and that was the only way in which the object could be attained. The incentive was 
present and with sufficient motive no task is too routine to be pleasant. 


You may say, that is all right in your ease, but it wouldn't fit mine. But it does fit 
yours. You are doing that very thing every day of your life, if you will only think 
about it for a few minutes. You go to your office every morning to do precisely the 
things that you did yesterday, or the day before, or the week earlier, and to do them 
in exactly the same way that you have been doing them for months and years, 



perhaps. They are routine matters to you. All business problems fall into certain 
categories, and every problem in a given class is treated in the same way. I should 
venture the opinion that 95 per cent of the work done by the average business man 
is routine, the kind of work that is mechanical with him, and he does it only 
because there is an incentive for him to go on. He wants to live, perhaps to make 
someone else happy, to keep his home intact, or any one of a thousand things you 
might think of. 


So it is with Masonic research. Things will always reduce themselves to a routine 
sooner or later. It cannot be helped. The routine of Masonic study and research is 
one of the most fascinating I have yet encountered. It is furnishing interest and 
enjoyment to thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of men. If it is 
interesting to them why should it not be interesting to you? Are you missing 
something that will help you enjoy life more intensely than you have in the past? 
There can be no harm in making an investigation and you may find that there is 
something in it that will prove to be of great value to you in many ways. 


— o — 


A MASONIC KINDERGARTEN 


The following letter is from an enthusiastic and resourceful brother in Toledo, 

Ohio. He has succeeded in working out in detail the general principle that we 
always insist upon when our advice is asked regarding the formation of a Study 
Club or like organization: that to be really successful everyone belonging to it must 
be put to work, and be given his share in the enlightenment of the brethren. 


It is really much more difficult for a Director to accomplish this than it is for him 
to arrange for a series of talks or lectures, and too often the line of least resistance 
is followed, with the result so graphically described by Bro. Devine. 



It is of course difficult at a distance to gauge the circumstances of a projected 
Study Club, with the result that we perforce have to confine ourselves to 
generalities in a great many cases. And besides it is a rather delicate matter to 
suggest that the brothers concerned know so little of Masonry that they should start 
in the Kindergarten class. It is for them to recognize the fact, and for those who do, 
Bro. Devine's plan, with modifications to fit special circumstances, will prove 
exactly, what they are looking for. 


I have something to tell you that I think will please and interest you. I would have 
told you of it long ago, but wanted to feel sure of the success of the venture, its 
benefits, its permanency, and its general results before reporting outside the circle 
of the lodge. Here is the story: 


Lotus Lodge, No. 625, Toledo, Ohio, is conducting a Masonic Study Club, and, so 
successfully, too, that its progress is attracting the attention of the other Toledo 
lodges, and the system adopted bids fair to be copied by them and (if you will 
pardon me) may eventually be the plan which will be used in every lodge in the 
country. I say this only because the plan is so simple of operation, and yet so 
effective that it takes hold immediately - spontaneously one might say - and leaves 
the students hungry for information and busy thinking and studying, in my opinion, 
forever after, for once having taken hold they cannot let go. 


Having read of all your suggestions in THE BUILDER for organizing Study Clubs, 
and having heard from brothers here who are well informed in Masonic 
symbolism, etc., and yet knowing of no such clubs operating successfully, except 
for a short period, I came to the conclusion that there might have been too much 
teaching and not enough studying - too much lecturing and perhaps too heavy 
material - too much one-man study, and the others listening - forgetting - and 
fading out of the picture. One brother attains a record of being well versed in 
Masonry - the others give up hope of ever learning very much; the class disbands 
and nothing of a permanent value is accomplished. 



How to overcome this was the problem, and now I am submitting the plan for your 
opinion on how near we may be arriving at the solution, giving you as a criterion 
the results of the Lotus Study Club. 


The plan: 


Simplicity is the keynote. Fearing that too elaborate a plan to begin with might 
mean a short life, then death, I proposed the following, which being accepted we 
proceeded to function accordingly. 


What it may develop into as to officers, dues, etc., the future will determine. To get 
started, to keep going, to interest, to instruct, to stimulate that interest, to have the 
class do the research work, to head them toward the Light, to keep them moving, 
ever seeking - this was the desired object, and now here is what has been done in 
four meetings. 


We meet on regular meeting nights after business, going into session about 9 p.m. 


First Meeting, Feb. 10. No Teacher. A Director; T. C. Devine. 


Present, twelve members, all with a sort of a let' s-see-what-if s-all-about look, not 
sure of themselves. This look soon vanished. 


Short talk by Director on Object and Purpose. 


Object. To improve myself in Masonry. 



To further seek the Light of Masonry. 


To learn the meaning of Masonic symbols, allegory and metaphor. 


To learn more about the work, of the phraseology of the ritual and so on. 


Purpose. First, to study and learn all I can. 


Second, to be able to arise on my feet and explain what I know briefly and 
intelligently. 


Third, to increase my vocabulary. 


Five words are given to look up and to use. 


It was impressed on their minds that no one can speak in public or even converse 
intelligently without knowing his subject, and the subject here is Masonry. 


There followed a series of questions. Not to be answered, however, but simply to 
arouse interest. No embarrassing questions, no trick questions, no difficult 
questions. The purpose is to simplify. 



The Director in his talk asks concerning the First, Second and Third Degrees, from 
the time of Entrance into the Lodge until the end; the Points of Entrance, the Cable 
Tow, Circumambulation, Divesting, etc., and inserts a constant, "Why?" 


Everyone present has one of these symbols assigned to him to look up, and is told 
that at the next meeting he will be called upon to rise to his feet and talk three 
minutes on his subject. (Bear in mind that with one or two exceptions these are 
brothers who never talked before an audience in their lives, Rough Stones to be 
made into Perfect Ashlars.) 


The Director then reads a carefully selected, short article on Symbolism, perhaps a 
short poem illustrative of the meaning Of allegory and metaphor. The Director then 
gives them a Jewel (at every meeting) to take home with them - a Jewel that cannot 
be lost, bought, sold or stolen. They wonder now what sort of a Jewel this is. The 
Director then requests them all to rise to their feet, and now a carefully selected 
Jewel - from a bound volume of THE BUILDER - of about six or eight lines, is 
first read to them, then they are asked to repeat after the leader, after which he 
drops out and they recite alone. 


The Jewel. Memorized by the Class. 


We are all like children playing on the seashore, picking up here a pebble and there 
a stone, with the whole ocean of truth unexplored before us. - Sir Isaac Newton. 


A few minutes explaining the meaning of this, the necessity of gathering 
information from authentic sources, the proper authorities to seek for data. Then, 
Goodnight. 



So, for the first meeting. I shall conclude here, and at the risk of fatiguing you 
continue with subsequent meetings in another letter, giving subjects assigned, 
response and experience to date. 


Thos. C. Devine. 


— o — 


THE PENALTY OF THE THIRD DEGREE 


At the first meeting of our Masonic Study Club one of the brothers propounded a 
question that we are unable to answer so I am taking the same up with you and 
would thank you for any information you can give us on the subject. The following 
is the question: The third ruffian, being a Fellowcraft, described the penalty of the 
Master Mason's Degree. How did he know it? M. D. R., Montana. 


This question is one that is continually being raised. It would almost seem that it 
has been asked at some time or other in every Study Club that has been organized 
since the Study Club movement began. For this reason we are going to try to, 
show, as clearly as is permissible, how it can be answered. It will be necessary of 
course to do this with reserve, and brethren interested will have to interpret what is 
said in the light of their own knowledge. 


In the first place the three degrees give us a story in broken installments, a good 
deal of which comes out incidentally and by implication. The story is that of the 
instituting of Freemasonry at the building of the Temple. 



No serious student now takes this story as literally true, but whether regarded as 
history or as allegory it is natural that we should demand consistency in it, that its 
details should be coherent. The particular point that is raised in the question is only 
inconsistent when we confuse the issue and forget what it is that is being done. Or 
more plainly it is due to lack of imagination. It is something as if in a theater 
watching a Shakespearean drama we held the apparition of a negro boy in a semi- 
military uniform offering peanuts and popcorn (or the more aristocratic chocolate 
and cigarettes) to be an inconsistency in the plot of the play. 


We will briefly touch on the chief points in this story so far as that is allowable. Its 
framework comes from the accounts in the Old Testament and Josephus. We learn 
that Solomon resolved to build the Temple his father, David, had projected. He 
obtained from the King of Tyre materials and skilled workmen, including an 
architect and master craftsmen who took charge of the whole work. At the same 
time a levy of the tribes of Israel was raised to supply the labor necessary. These 
"bearers of burdens" are equated with the Entered Apprentices, and this really is a 
grave discrepancy, though not often noticed. Perhaps we can resolve it by 
assuming that the most eatable of these laborers were taught the art of masonry, 
and became in due time Fellowcrafts. These two grades we are told were 
organized, and the organization thus adopted became later the first and second 
degrees of Freemasonry. But the story as we have it goes further than this. It is 
implied that the architect and the two kings formed a master's grade, which they 
only possessed, but which they promised as a reward to all faithful and diligent 
craftsmen when the temple was completed. Of course the three Masters could not 
be supposed to supervise every detail of the work, so we are rather obscurely told 
of a superior class of craftsmen who acted as foremen or overseers, but it is 
perfectly clear that these officials were not Master Masons. 


Now the story goes on to tell us that owing to an unexpected and tragic occurrence 
the secrets of the Master Mason's Degree were lost, and it became impossible to 
carry out the promise that had been made to the craftsmen. The chief secret of this 
degree was the Word, and perhaps the stress that is laid upon this has helped to 
obscure the fact that not only was the Master's Word lost, and the other secrets, but 
also everything else that went with them, including the ritual and obligations of the 
rank or degree, whatever we may suppose them to have been. The proof that this is 
so, even though it is not definitely stated, is that the substitute ritual deals with 



matters that had not happened when the real one was framed, as we suppose, by 
Solomon and the two Hirams in conference. Furthermore these things, the memory 
of which is supposed to be perpetuated, were not secret. Had there been 
newspapers at the period, they would have been front page stuff with some 
headlines. They would be known to the workmen, and to all the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem, women and children as well as men. There are certain things said to 
have happened that we must imagine were kept from general knowledge, but the 
greater part of what occurred must have been public in the nature of the ease. 


The misunderstanding arises when we confuse two points of view. Actually the 
drama is a ceremony being performed in a tiled lodge of Master Masons. But we 
must not carry this objective fact into the story, any more than we inject the peanut 
and candy boy into the plot of Hamlet. From the point of view of the story the 
lodge room, like a stage, represents at different times the Temple, the country 
about Jerusalem, even to Joppa, and King Solomon's council chamber. At no time 
is it supposed to be a lodge of Masons till the very end, when we may suppose that 
King Solomon instituted a substitute master's degree at the raising of H. A. 
Certainly up to this point there is no question of a Master's lodge, for such a thing 
was, according to our story, non-existent. There were only two Masters living, 
while it required three at least to form a lodge. 


When all these considerations are kept in mind it becomes clear that in the incident 
referred to in the question there is no inconsistency, for the Master's Degree as we 
know it, the substitute degree, was not then in existence. What the real one was we 
are naturally not bold. We must therefore interpret the history that the character 
referred to invoked this particular penalty because he thought the others that had 
been mentioned were inadequate; and that afterwards Solomon agreed with him in 
this and adopted it as a sanction for the obligation of the new Master's Degree, just 
as he did various casual signs made by certain brethren on another occasion. 


These considerations are all strictly confined to the internal consistency of the 
story or drama taken by itself and on its own grounds. There is besides this the 
strictly historical aspect. Reverting to the analogy of the theater, we have already 
distinguished the stage and the auditorium, now we have the point of view of the 
literary critic, the discussion of the play itself, and how the author came to write it 



or if he really did write it and not someone else under his name. From the historical 
point of view we ask how did our present ritual come to develop out of the 
ceremonies in use in 1730, which were very different in their details? And 
confining ourselves to the question of the penalties, we may say that it would 
appear that at the time the first grand Lodge was formed there were none included 
in the obligation. At that time it appears that there were only two degrees, and it is 
not certain that there was any special form of oath administered in the second or 
superior one, which was, by the way, equivalent to Master Mason and not 
Fellowcraft. But though the penalty was not mentioned in the obligation it was 
known that there was a traditional punishment inflicted on any Mason who broke 
it, and this punishment seems to have combined the Penalties now distributed 
among our three degrees. 


— o — 


THE LIBRARY 


The books reviewed in these pages can be procured through the Book Department 
of the N.M.R.S. at the prices given, which always include postage. These prices are 
subject (as a matter of precaution) to change without notice; though occasion for 
this will very seldom arise. Occasionally it may happen, where books are privately 
printed, that there is no supply available, but some indication of this will be given 
in the review. The Book Department is equipped to procure any books in print on 
any subject, and will make inquiries for second-hand works and books out of print. 


THE ARCHITECT IN HISTORY. By Martin S. Briggs. Published by the Oxford 
University Press. Cloth, table of contents, list of illustrations, index, 400 pages. 
Price, $3.90. 


AN exceedingly interesting account of a subject about which there is a very great 
deal of ignorance and misapprehension. The book gives in small compass what is 



known of the status of the architect in the ancient world, with chapters on those of 
Greece and Rome respectively. This is followed by one on the Middle Ages. When 
the author comes to the Renaissance he limits himself to Italy, France and England, 
and for modern times to England only, This procedure being the necessary result of 
the fact that to treat the subject fully in every civilized country would require a 
series of volumes. 


It is a book that the layman can fully appreciate and should be read by all Masonic 
students interested in the pre-history of the Fraternity. The work is discussed fully 
at page 139. 


* * * 


THE ROMANCE OF REALITY - The Beauties and Mysteries of Modem Science. 
By Beverly L. Clarke. Published by Macmillan & Co. Illustrated. 252 pages. Price, 
$2.40. 

THIS is a charming book. It is an exposition for the benefit of the general reader of 
the fundamentals of modem science. It makes at least partially comprehensible for 
the great mass of people who have neither time nor opportunity for study of the 
deeper things of physics and chemistry some of the mysteries of electrons, atoms, 
energy, beat, light, electricity, magnetism, radio, and even that inscmtable puzzle 
to the ordinary man, the theory of relativity. The author shows a sense of humor in 
giving commonplace similes and comparisons that is entertaining as well as 
instructive. The book will not make scientists, and it was not so intended, but it is 
one of the very best we have seen to serve the purpose of the author, which was to 
add to the sum total of general culture in a small way, and everybody who can get 
it should read it. 


L. B. R. 



FREEMASONRY AT A GLANCE. Answers to 555 Questions. By Reynold E. 
Blight. Published by the Masonic Digest. Cloth, index, 67 pages. 


WE think that this convenient little handbook will have to be added to the list of 
works of reference that every Study Club should have. It is based on the author's 
experience with the work of Masonic Education of the Grand Lodge of California, 
and it will meet a real need. 


Bro. Blight modestly disclaims any pretensions to scholarship, but after all it 
requires a good many of the qualities of scholarship to select the material for a 
compilation of this kind. And even though the "character of the work makes 
unavoidable a seeming dogmatic finality to many of the answers" this is necessary 
in the first stages of acquiring knowledge of any subject. It is not until the student 
has acquired some elementary knowledge of the subject, whether Masonry or 
Mathematics, or History or Chemistry, that he can safely begin to exercise his own 
judgment, and criticize the first steps along which he was led by dogmatic 
authority. 


Certain of the answers we are inclined to think might be amended with advantage, 
and we offer the following criticisms rather as suggestions for the preparation of a 
second edition, which, if the work meets the response it deserves, will probably be 
needed. 


We are not familiar with the California ritual, but for general use, it would seem 
more appropriate to put the reference to Ecclesiastes in Q. 40 under the third 
degree instead of the first, and Q. 94 which refers to the "Theological Ladder" in 
the first instead of the second, though in each case this arrangement may be correct 
for California. 



In Q. 54 the French phrase Dien me garde is said to be the origin of the term Due- 
guard. An article by Bro. Atchison in THE BUILDER for January, 1922, supported 
this derivation, but there is a much simpler and more direct explanation. In English 
and Continental ritual forms the brethren "come to order" at certain times in the 
proceedings. In some 18th century rituals this posture is called "the guard" which 
gives a perfectly straightforward meaning. The "due guard" would thus be the 
"guard" proper for that occasion or degree. 


Q. 55. It might be added that the use of the word "hele" for covering, roofing, 
thatching still persists in English dialect. 


Q. 1 1 1 . It is the opinion of a good many students, among them apparently the late 

R. F. Gould, that the essentials of the third degree existed as a separate grade with 
its own ceremonies, from "time immemorial." 


Q. 116. It might be added that these Regulations first appeared in the Book of 
Constitutions published by Dr. Anderson in 1723. 


Q. 127. It might be better to modify the statement to "it is said that the Hebrews 
always planted Acacia on their graves," for in truth it is very doubtful if such a 
custom really existed. 


Q. 134. In regard to the Beehive as a Masonic emblem Bro. Bullamore in A.Q.C., 
Vol. XXXVI has shown that it was current long before the date of the schism of 
the Ancients and Moderns. It was very common in European Masonic designs. The 
earliest definite date is on a medal from Brunswick bearing date of 1744, but it was 
undoubtedly used before that. 



Q. 239. Though it was said by his enemies that Cagliostro's real name was 
Balsamo it is at least doubtful if this was true. 


Q. 264 and 265. In view of Bro. Williamson's recent criticism of the myth of the 
Dionysiac Artificers in THE BUILDER it would seem better to recast these 
answers completely. 


Q. 267. It would be more correct to say "What were the Collegia?" or better still 
"What were the Collegia Fabrorum?For "Collegium" had as general a meaning in 
Latin usage as "society" or "association" has with us. There were "collegia" of all 
kinds of people, from the mutual benefit and burial societies of slaves up to the 
colleges of the augurs and pontiffs. 


Q. 268. It might be added that some competent authorities hold that the word 
"Comacine" is really a form of "Commacine" or "Commacon," that is, associate or 
fellow mason. 


Q. 280. This is the extreme iconoclastic view of such students as Murray Lyon. It 
does not really seem probable, in view of all the evidence, that the form of 
"making a Mason" was ever normally merely the communication of a word and 
nothing more. 


Q. 280. While the statement is perfectly true, still the minutes of Mary's Chapel are 
antedated by those of the defunct Lodge of Atcheson's Haven. 


Q. 280. The best authorities are all inclined to agree that Ramsay had nothing 
whatever to do with revising the ritual or inventing new degrees, though the 
references to the Crusades and Chivalric Orders in his famous oration may 



possibly have given others the idea from which some of the new grades were 
constructed. 


Q. 296. There is an obvious misprint in the name of Sayer, the first Grand Master 
in 1717. 


Q. 310. The "Modems" had used that term for themselves long before the Grand 
Lodge of "Ancients" was formed, and it was not until Dermott began to use it 
against them that they objected to it. 


Q. 402. The reviewer must confess complete ignorance as to the claim that is made 
for George Wither as the first Masonic poet. It seems very dubious on general 
grounds. He would he inclined to say that Matthew Birkhead, the putative author 
of the Entered Apprentice's Song, had a more plausible claim. If poems with 
metaphors or figures drawn from the building craft are to be taken as evidence 
instances could be found much earlier than the sixteenth century. 


Qs. 406 and 408 might well be consolidated or at least put in consecutive order. 


Q. 429. It would be more accurate to say that Lord Kitchener was Provincial Grand 
Master of the Punjab, there being no independent Grand Lodges in India. 


Q. 530. While it has been suggested that the Broached Thurnal was a tool, Bro. 
Dring has proved practically beyond question that it is derived from Orrial or 
Urnal, a kind of free stone once in demand for fine work. 


Q. 543. This conception of the status of the "Mason's Dame" seems to be drawn 
from the Modern Operatives or so-called "Gild Masons." Where the term is used in 



the old MS. Constitutions it undoubtedly refers to the Master Mason's wife, whom 
the Apprentice, being an inmate of his Master's household, was bound to respect 
and obey. It was purely a practical regulation and had nothing whatever to do with 
the "lodge." 


This list of suggestions may seem rather formidable, but really it is less than four 
per cent of the total number of questions that they affect. This speaks very well for 
the care that has been exercised in the compilation; and in almost every case the 
opinion expressed is widely accepted or at least has the support of some authority, 
and it is not impossible that the reviewer may be wrong. 


There are one or two misprints which undoubtedly have already been detected by 
the author, in the annoying way misprints have of seizing attention after it is too 
late to correct them. 


* * * 


THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE MODERN STATE. By Charles C. 
Marshall. Published by Dodd, Mead & Co. Cloth, table of contents, appendices, 
bibliography, 339 pages. 


MOST people will recall the correspondence published in The Atlantic Monthly 
last year between Mr. Marshall and the Hon. Alfred E. Smith, an encounter that 
must have struck all thinking readers as only a preliminary skirmish. Mr. Marshall 
has now deployed his main forces and heavy artillery - to continue the military 
metaphor. 


Perhaps this may suggest a wrong impression - it is not a heavy book; in spite of 
the fact that the work is a very complete setting forth of the evidence, with 



argument thereupon, it is clearly and interestingly written, and will hold the 
attention of the reader from first to last, no matter on which side of the controversy 
he may be aligned. Though there is the mark on every page of the highly trained 
legal mind, the author has nevertheless succeeded in presenting his case in such a 
way that every intelligent reader can follow it without difficulty. It impresses one, 
in fact, not so much as the argument of counsel but more as the impartial summing 
up of a judge, although, of course, the work is in a sense ex parte, being 
professedly the presentation of the complete and final irreconcilability of the 
claims of the papacy with the modem idea of the state. The tone of the argument is 
beyond reproach in respect to form; Mr. Marshall treats the Roman Church, its 
authorities and defenders, with a constant courtesy and consideration that the 
reviewer is inclined to suspect will irritate many of those on the other side even 
more than would the bitterness and invective which once disfigured religious and 
theological disputes, and which is not entirely unknown at the present time. This 
tone is, however, only the natural result of the author's own position as a member 
of a church that has always contested the exclusive claim of Rome to Catholicity. 
To him, therefore, the Roman Church is Catholic, and the Pope is, by historical 
claim, the patriarch of the west, and the schism between the churches in 
communion with him on the one hand and the Eastern churches, the Anglican 
Communion and, we may add, the Old Catholics on the other, is to be deeply 
deplored. 


This admission, however suspicious of it ultra-Protestants may be, is the traditional 
attitude of the episcopal churches not in communion with Rome, and has in it 
nothing of weakness or of concession based on expediency. As is demonstrated in 
the book itself, the claims of the papacy form the barrier, a seemingly impassable 
one, that separates the Roman Church from the rest of Christendom. 


But it must not be supposed that there is any discussion of the theological aspects 
of the situation, or even any direct argument concerning the validity of the papal 
position. Mr. Marshall confines himself consistently and steadily to the single 
purpose in view - adumbrated in his Open Letter last year - which is, to set forth 
clearly just what the position is, what is claimed by and for the Pope, and the 
impossibility of reconciling those claims with the very nature and idea of the 
modern democratic state, with especial reference, naturally, to the Constitution and 



fundamental principles of the United States of North America. Probably this is best 
described in the author's own words. He professes a 


. . . profound veneration for the religion of the Catholic Church, Greek, Roman and 
Anglican, East and West, excepting insofar as it asserts a church sovereignty by 
divine right as an article of faith or unites itself to the secular State as the religion 
by law established, 


and then he says that the purpose of his work is to 


. . . present the situation between the Church of Rome and the modern State, not 
from the viewpoint of any religious or sectarian prepossessions but from that of the 
disinterested observer. 


So far as a presentation of this kind is humanly possible one who is not at heart 
indifferent to the matter in dispute it would seem that Mr. Marshall has succeeded 
in what he set out to do. He takes the theory and principles embodied by the 
Constitution of the United States as representing the "modem State,” and the actual 
government of the country as a very close approximation to it. This theory is in a 
nutshell that of government based on the consent of the governed. Mr. Marshall 
does not think that the "modem State," regarded as an ideal, has yet been embodied 
in any existing political unit, in which opinion all intelligent observers will agree 
with him, and be apparently desiderates "a further development of both the Church 
of Rome and the secular state" to bring about "a synthesis that shall give to the 
world Christianity and Democracy in a noble equilibrium." A desire (it can hardly 
be a hope, at least not in any predictable future) in which all could agree as a 
formula had it been said, "the Church and the secular State." It is not wholly clear 
whether this is what is really meant or not. 


The method which the author has chosen to deal with the subject is to take in the 
first place, official Papal pronouncements, such as the Constitution Pastor 



Aetemus, the Syllabus of Pius IX, the Encyclical Immortale Dei, and so on, and 
then to discuss them in the light of the comments and explanations of Roman 
Catholic authorities. The Catholic Encyclopedia is constantly cited, for example. A 
glance at the bibliographical list of authors and works referred to will show how 
extensively Mr. Marshall has pursued his researches in this direction. 


Naturally, in any number of people, whether a religious, social or political group or 
organization, there will be varying views as to its tendencies, principles and aims, 
and the looser the organization the greater will be the divergence in this respect. 
One would look for something very near the irreducible minimum of uniformity 
possible in such a highly disciplined body as is the Roman Church, but strange to 
say it is not very apparent. At least it seems difficult to get any Romanist to admit 
that any given citation has authority, or that it means really what the ordinary usage 
of language would lead the inquirer to think. If theologians or canonists be quoted 
we will be told they do not speak for the Church, if papal utterances are referred to 
we are warned that they are to be understood in the light of the explanations of 
theologians and canonists. It perhaps would be unkind to say that the doctrine of 
the Roman Church is as elusive as that of a political party, but the difficulty is a 
real one to any fair minded controversialist, and one wonders what is the use of 
such minute definition in dogmatic teaching if it cannot be cited as final in regard 
to the position taken by the Church, as such, on any given point. All the resources 
of language have been used, apparently, in such documents as the Pastor Aetemus, 
to take one example, to make explicit the, most tremendous claims on behalf of the 
Pope, of spiritual and temporal sovereignty over all Christians - all baptized 
Christians, that is - and then the utmost ingenuity of the keenest and most subtle 
minds is expended in showing that such statements do not bear the significance 
that the careful and precise language in which they are framed would lead us to 
suppose. Practically this is very convenient, the papal utterances always remain in 
reserve, but an interpretation can be produced at any moment that modifies them to 
meet the exigencies of any particular case. And then such interpretations can 
always be repudiated as being merely individual and without authority. Let us 
hasten to say that this state of things is not unique, but we naturally expect to find 
it in associations, religious or otherwise, that make no claims to divinely guided 
inerrability. 



At the present time not only the practicability, but the theoretical validity, of the 
theory of democratic government is being called in question throughout the world. 
It may be that the present forward movement, observable in all countries, on the 
part of the papacy, is closely connected with this, that it is another symptom of the 
unrest and discontent that seethes under the surface of our occidental civilization. 
That there is such a forward movement is obvious enough to anyone who has kept 
even superficially in touch with the course of world events. Only a few years ago, 
actually, it seemed to everyone that we had reached a practical modus vivendi in 
regard to the relations of religion and politics - church and state. There was a state 
of equilibrium, even if hardly to be described as a noble one. But that no longer 
seems to exist. The relationship of the religious groupings of men to those of 
purely a political nature seem yet to be far from being harmonized. The case is a 
simple one when in fact the allegiance of the citizen falls in a grouping that is 
conterminous with his religion. In a savage tribe, in the City State of ancient 
Greece, in Republican Rome, this is the situation that we find, and so long as it 
continues the problem does not arise; even the most acute minds hardly even 
perceive its existence. The "tolerance" of the modem state is not in origin due to a 
scientific analysis, and a separation of distinct and disparate things, but is 
historically a compromise based on bitter and protracted stmggles to suppress 
"heresy" and "false religions." Stmggles carried in some cases to the point of 
extermination of the dissidents, and in fact only successful where carried to that 
extreme. Thus the question arises, is this separation of religion and government 
really the final ideal, is it anything more than a compromise, not based on principle 
but on mere expediency, which will require modification and perhaps negation as 
circumstances change? It is too big a subject to be more than mentioned here. But 
in fact civil government seems tmly to have spmng from the practice of religion, 
or, if that seems too sweeping, at least the two things have spmng from the same 
root; and they have, until only yesterday in the history of the race, always been 
inextricably mingled. Kings were originally priests or "medicine men" or 
representatives of deities, or even deities themselves. As priests became kings, new 
priesthoods came into being to mediate between king and people, and in time 
gained power as they could, and perhaps became mlers again in their turn. All 
possible combinations arose; though not until the rise of the purely ethical religions 
that accepted converts regardless of race or caste, was it possible for the modem 
form of the problem to emerge. 


The earlier forms of religion were "patriotic," the welfare and existence of the 
community, tribe, people, city, nation, were bound up in its observance. Patriotic 



religions are by no means wholly of the past. The real religion of Japan, perhaps of 
the German Empire before the way, perhaps of the United States now, is 
patriotism. It has been said that religion is what men are ready to persecute others 
for, or to endure persecution for themselves, and it may be that so far from being 
truly tolerant the "Modem State," so far as it exists in reality, is merely indifferent 
to the creeds called religious, but actually has its cult, its national symbols, and 
fervid loyalties, not to say idolatries, for which it is prepared even to sacrifice 
human life upon occasion. 


Such matters are however as yet academic, and certainly beyond the limits to 
which Mr. Marshall confines himself in the work under review. They are 
mentioned only because it is upon this background of the unanalyzed and highly 
debatable that the practical question is presented to us in fact. Without some 
consciousness of the problems that lie in this background it is difficult to get a tme 
orientation of the problem that is raised. It is a problem of which many good 
people refuse to admit the existence, both Roman Catholics and others. And while 
others may admit a theoretical incompatibility between the two sets of claims, they 
prefer to believe that the equilibrium of compromise that seemed so settled 
yesterday has not been and will not be disturbed. No one likes to be told disturbing 
things, and it is human to transfer the natural distaste for the warning to the person 
who gives it. Yet it is not wisdom to refuse to see an approaching conflict, 
especially if there is the possibility of taking action to avert it. It is impossible to 
take such action without fully understanding the tendencies and motive forces that 
underlie the external situation. 


The elements of a clash between religious belief, or the rules of an organized 
religion, and the State of which, those holding such faith, or belonging to such 
church, are citizens or subjects are always present. Such opposition has occurred 
even when the majority of the citizens were members of the church - this because 
even under the most elastic forms of democracy, and much more so under other 
forms of government, it is possible for the two mechanisms to function out of 
harmony with each other. Every religion, worthy of the name, holds some beliefs 
that its members not only regard as worth living for, but (in theory at least) worth 
dying for too, if the need arise. And such beliefs imply rules of action. And if such 
rules of action conflict with the laws of the state then the faithful adherent will say 
always, "I will obey God before man, I will keep the divine law before the human 



law." To the state, and the remainder of the citizens composing it, such people are 
fanatics or bigots, or at the least perverse and misguided enthusiasts. Such were the 
early Christians in the Roman Empire, such were the Jews in the days of Antiochus 
Epiphanes, such have been many heretics since who seemed to those who did not 
share their beliefs to be merely obstinate and perverse. So far, therefore, as the 
inherent possibilities of conflict arise it is essentially the same in any form of 
belief. Mr. Marshall says more than once, however, that as compared with the 
Roman Church, which claims obedience to its laws, other churches only offer their 
teaching as opinion. But it would seem that in reality he does not mean exactly 
what his expression might imply, for his contrast is not between religious beliefs, 
but between sovereignties. Nevertheless it might have been better to have put it 
differently. It is not in the kind of claims made for it that the Roman Church is 
different from others, though they are distinguished by their particularity and 
comprehensiveness, it is not even in the claim that the state should be subservient 
to the Church, for Judaism, Mohammedanism and New England 
Congregationalism have all made the same claim in their day; it is not even in the 
claim of a divinely guided head, set by some miraculous means beyond the 
possibility of error, for Mormonism and Doweism, and Lamaism and many others 
have had the same feature, it is rather in the special combination of these elements 
that marks the Roman position. It is not only a church but an international political 
power. It is not only that but a highly organized autocracy. Thus not only is there 
the inherent possibility conflict that exists between any religion and the secular 
state, but there is the added possibility of conflict existing in the relations of a 
foreign or external authority, and finally, in the democratic state, the possibilities 
of conflict between the ideals of freedom and despotism. 


There is another feature of the situation as it exists in the , 'modem state," as that is 
conceived by the author, the state that seeks to separate entirely all matters 
concerning religion, all spiritualities, from purely secular and temporal affairs. It is 
so far an unrealized, and perhaps unrealizable aim, on account precisely of the 
"twilight zones" which the author discusses in his final chapters, having adopted 
the term coined by Cardinal Gibbons. But, so far as this separation has been 
effected, so far as the state ignores religion, so far it lays itself bare to control 
through its own machinery by any religious body sufficiently strong and well 
organized, that is, through normal political methods available of right to all 
citizens. An established Church is to some extent a regulated Church. In older 
countries centuries of conflict have produced checks of various kinds, concordats, 
laws of succession and so on, by which the state protects itself. The pure secular 



democracy is open at any time to capture by legitimate constitutional means by an 
organization of which it does not recognize the existence. As democracy works 
out, a well organized minority that knows what it wants or whose leaders know 
what they want - can usually get it. 


But whatever may be the final outcome of the evolution of the state in the future, 
near or distant, one thing is certain, and that is that the Constitution of the United 
States presupposes certain principles - as Mr. Marshall puts it, the "State which 
Jefferson created" claims that the seat of moral sovereignty lies in the "Civic 
Primacy of the People," and he concludes thus: 


The seat of moral sovereignty in the state must rest either in the Civic Primacy of 
the People, which holds itself responsible to everyone, or in the ecclesiastical 
primacy of a Sovereign Pope, which holds itself responsible to no one. The 
primacy of the People and the primacy of the Pope are the sole claimants of that 
moral sovereignty. It cannot rest in both. The choice is with mankind. 


From what has already been said it will be apparent that the reviewer at least is not 
prepared to admit this antithesis as absolute. The Jeffersonian conception does not 
seem to be the final form of the state. But that admittedly is as yet an academic 
question. What is quite clear is this, that the people of the United States, of all 
creeds, including Roman Catholics, have committed themselves to a certain form 
of government, and that being the case, the question as put does arise. But how it is 
to be answered is another matter altogether. 


* * * 


PROOF OF ROME'S POLITICAL MEDDLING IN AMERICA. Published by 
"The Fellowship Forum," Washington, D. C. Cloth, 125 pages. Price, $1.10. 



WITH the exception of the preface of twenty pages, this little volume consists 
chiefly of extracts from official reports of the National Catholic Welfare Council 
submitted by the Council to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of the United States 
assembled in conference in Washington, D.C., Sept. 22-23, 1920. If we are 
informed correctly, said Welfare Council was shortly afterwards dissolved by the 
Pope as being prejudicial to the power of the American Archbishops; but upon 
remonstration to him by some of the lower hierarchs it was resuscitated under the 
name of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. It is by all accounts a very 
active and influential concern. It comprises six departments: (1) The Executive 
Department, (2) Department of Education, (3) Department of Press and Publicity, 
(4) Department of Laws and Legislation, (5) Department of Social Action, (6) 
Department of Lay Organizations. 


Prom these extracts it is apparent that the National Catholic Welfare Council has 
occasionally taken a hand in politics, for instance in the state of Oregon where it 
opposed legislation hostile to the private schools. We can see no wrong in such 
activities. The American Catholics have a perfect right to employ campaign 
literature and the ballot to safeguard what they consider to be their religious 
interests. 


The N.C.W.C. is not a political faction. It conducts a bureau that watches our two 
great political parties in the interest of the moral and socio-economic welfare of the 
nation in general and in the interest of the Catholic religion in particular. We 
recognize in the N.C.W.C. a great political potentiality. If it should feel called 
upon in the eventuality of some great national issue to resort to political action, we 
credit it with sufficient influence to command the bulk of the Catholic vote roughly 
estimated at ten millions. That would normally decide a national election. 
Potentially, therefore, the N.C.W.C. holds the balance of power in national politics. 
We do not believe that it has so far seen fit to demonstrate its power as the political 
action committee of the American hierarchy. It has taken part only in minor 
political campaigns, as in the state of Oregon, and on the whole contented itself 
with acting as the political watch dog of the hierarchy. We have no reason to doubt 
that its aims are the best and purest and that its work hitherto has been anything but 
beneficent or at least legitimate. What may cause a certain discomfort to the 
impartial observer is this: the American hierarchy which possesses in the N.C.W.C. 
a sharp political sword is arbitrarily appointed to office by the Pope, a foreign 



autocrat. It is he also who has created the N.C.W.C. and it exists only by his 
permission. It is his political weapon in the United States. One cannot help 
wondering at the possibilities of this great dormant power in the hands of a foreign 
autocrat. We must hope for the best. 


The book is unquestionably thought-provoking and is superior to much so-called 
literature produced from Anti-Romanist sources. It labors, however, under the 
defect that it makes some uncalled for attacks on the Catholic religion as such and 
raises exaggerated charges against the papacy. For instance on page 15 it is 
claimed: 


We believe enough has already been said to show very clearly that the papacy is in 
quest of temporal power, that if it had the might, it would bring America under its 
dominion as completely, as tyrannically and as bloodily, if necessary, as it did 
Spain in the days of the Inquisition. 


The author has no cause to question the loyalty of the American Catholics. They 
stood the supreme test of it when they wholeheartedly supported the government in 
our recent war with Spain, a nation entirely Catholic. To wantonly insult the 
Catholic citizens of the country is to create sympathy for them, and this again 
simply tends to promote the interests of the Vatican. 


The author has conclusively proven that the N.C.W.C. is a powerful political 
weapon in the hands of the Pope, but so in truth are certain ultra-Protestant 
organizations, through their immoderate attacks upon Roman Catholicism. The one 
is supported with Catholic money, the others with Protestant money. The Pope has 
every reason to be well pleased with both. 



MASONRY IN THE FORMATION OF OUR GOVERNMENT, 1761-1799. By 
Philip A. Roth. Published by the author. Cloth, table of contents, indices, 
illustrated, 187 pages. Price, $2.50. 


THERE is one subject that is of perennial interest to American Masons, and that is 
the part played by members of the Fraternity in the early history of the country - 
indeed at all periods of its history. The little book now under review will meet a 
real need, and a copy should be in the library of every lodge that has such a thing, 
and every Study Club needs a copy among its works of reference. Sooner or later 
questions will arise whether such a figure in the story of the past was a Mason and 
if so, where and when was he made, and what offices did he hold in his lodge or 
Grand Lodge. 


It is very hard to make the ordinary Mason realize the amount of tedious labor that 
is required to gather material of this kifid. They seem to think that the records of 
the past are as full and complete and as easily accessible as they are in this day of 
card indexes and loose leaf binders. As a matter of fact records in the old days 
were very sketchily kept in a large number of cases, and later no one cared 
anything about preserving such as were made. It thus happens over and over again 
that we know a man was a Mason through some casual incident, as that he held 
office in a Grand Lodge, that he had a Masonic funeral, or that he was spoken of as 
a Mason by someone in a position to know; while so far as any lodge records go no 
trace of his initiation or membership remains. A case in point is that of John Jacob 
Astor. We know definitely that in 1798 he was elected Grand Treasurer of the 
Grand Lodge of New York, and that is the only proof we have that he was a 
Mason. There are many other similar cases. It may well be that tradition may be 
correct that this or that noted man was a Mason, yet without some definite record it 
is not safe to accept mere hearsay. Another source of difficulty in getting at the 
facts is the great reserve practiced by Masons in early days. Benjamin Franklin, for 
an example, was an enthusiastic Mason, he was Grand Master of Pennsylvania and 
a member of the famous Lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris; yet he never mentions 
Freemasonry in his autobiography. 



Bro. Roth has arranged his material in a very useful way. The text gives us the 
history of the period with special reference to those historic figures who were 
Masons. As these are mentioned in the text, a biographical footnote is given 
arranged on a uniform plan. First a brief sketch of the chief incidents of the 
individual's life and at the end, in bolder type, what is known of his Masonic 
connections, with the source of the information. For reference a complete table of 
names is given after the table of contents. 


A very large number of illustrations have been collected; there is a portrait of every 
personage of consequence who is mentioned, and many other old cuts are 
reproduced that add greatly to the interest of the work. 


So far as we have been able to test the statements made, the work seems to be 
painstakingly accurate. And as the author gives his authorities it will be always 
easy to check what is said in any particular instance. 


M. W. Bro. H. W. Dixon, Grand Master of Wisconsin, has officially approved and 
endorsed the book, and while this is in these days rather a matter of form, it is in 
this case fully justified, and we can say that it ought to meet with a warm welcome 
not only from the brethren of Wisconsin, but also by the American Craft generally. 


M. T. 


* * * 


OLD SWORDS. By Val Gielgud. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Co. Cloth, 
296 pages. Price $2.15. 



THERE are fashions in everything, not only in clothes but also in ideas, in science 
and philosophy - where the prevailing mode is dignified by the term zeit geist - but 
also in fiction, and it is of fiction we now speak. 


Indeed it is obvious, on reflection, that the tales people make up to tell others will 
reflect their desires and aspirations, and the popular tales will be those that fit the 
desires and aspirations of the majority. This can be seen without any instruction in 
Freudian complexes. In the same way such tales will be put in the framework of 
the possible or the real, as that is apprehended by the story teller and his hearers. In 
a bygone age the machinery involved magic and genii and gods from the machine, 
because they were all believed in as part of the scheme of things. In the much 
maligned and despised Victorian era civilization and convention and propriety and 
good manners were believed able to cope with all physical and moral difficulties, 
and the happy ending was demanded. But the generation that has been through the 
war sees things differently. Civilization is but scenery on a stage, it is only to the 
children and the country cousins that it seems real and enduring. Most of us know 
too well that it is not. We have seen it shaken, we have seen the flames of hell 
behind it, glowing luridly through the lath and painted canvas - and all this is 
reflected in the fiction of the day. Disillusionment is the keynote. 


The author of the present work is of Polish descent and of English birth and 
education. We guess a grandson of one of the refugees of 1863. He seems too 
healthy-minded to be able to acquiesce in pure pessimism, so he picks up the 
pieces finally in an almost conventional happy ending, for which he is to be 
commended. The latter part of the tale - or rather the tale proper - is breathlessly 
thrilling, but the setting of the scenery is done too much in view of the audience. 
He has tried to combine a family saga with a tale of adventure, and technically the 
attempt is a failure; but it has given him an opportunity to draw a vivid sketch of 
pre-war Russia, and after-war Poland, or at least of the Russo-Polish frontier. The 
horrors depicted may seem overdrawn, but we doubt very much if they are. Very 
terrible things have happened in Eastern Europe since 1916, and though the 
author's knowledge does not seem to be first-hand, it is much of it, we fancy, not 
more than secondhand. But perhaps to dwell on this is beside the mark. It can be 
said that after glancing through Book I to get some idea of the antecedents of the 
characters, one enters upon a really exciting and well told story, in which the 
interest grows till the very dramatic end. 



M 


* * * 


A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PORT CREDIT CHAPTER, No. 280. By 
Henry T. Smith. Privately printed. 


THE author is Grand Scribe E. of the Grand Chapter of Ontario. The Chapter, the 
first history of which appears early in its life, was only instituted seven years ago. 
But there is some interesting pioneer history connected with the hall in which it 
meets, and which apparently is the property of Mississauga Lodge, No. 524, under 
the Grand Lodge of Canada in the Province of Ontario, to give it its full and rather 
perplexing title. At least it is confusing to those who do not remember that Canada 
was originally what is now divided into the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and 
which even in the memory of some of us still living were called Upper and Lower 
Canada. 


The district was settled by United Empire Loyalists, people who on this side of the 
line were known and hated as Tories. However the hate and the reasons therefor 
have long passed, and everyone can admire the great sacrifices made by these 
emigrants to the northern wilderness for the sake of their loyalties. 


In 1838 it was decided to build a new Methodist church. The work was carried out 
by the settlers with the aid of the Indians. Everything was done locally, even the 
nails were forged in the village blacksmith's shop. 



The memory of pioneer days is rapidly passing away, and it is well that wherever 
possible such reminiscences should be recorded in permanent form. 


THE International Masonic Association with headquarters at Geneva is publishing 
its Year Book of Universal Masonry (Annuaire de la Maconnerie Universelle). 
Owing to various reasons and perhaps lack of available funds, this has not been 
published for several years. It contains very useful information and statistics 
concerning Masonic bodies in all the countries of the world, drawn from official 
sources. The information is given in three languages, English, French and German. 
The address of each Grand Lodge is given and a list of the Masonic Jurisdictions 
recognized by it. The names and numbers of subordinate lodges, with the locality 
of each and the address of the secretary is a useful feature. It is not confined to 
symbolic Masonry, but gives also information regarding the Supreme Councils of 
the A. and A. S. R. and also Grand Chapters of the Royal Arch and Grand 
Commanderies of Masonic Knights Templar. The subscription price is five francs, 
Swiss; with postage and duty, probably about $1.50. We are very glad to hear that 
this is coming out again, as we have found it in the past a most useful work of 
reference; in spite of the fact that the last edition is now sadly out of date. 


— o — 


BOOK RECEIVED 


Masonic Speech Making, by J. Walter Hobbs. Published by Masonic Record, Ltd. 
Cloth, Analytical Table of Contents, 118 pages. Price, $1.50. 


— o — 


THE QUESTION BOX 



and CORRESPONDENCE 


THE REVIEW OF "LABOUR AND REFRESHMENT"' 


The enclosed letter from Bro. J. S. M. Ward speaks for itself. I have never found 
you unfair or refusing to give the other fellow's side even if you did not agree with 
him. So I am sending it along ... If you don't want to use it, send it back to me and 
I'll print it. 


Cyrus Field Willard, California. 


Dear Bro. Willard: 


Many thanks for your letter of Jan. 3 1 . 1 was delighted to hear from you after so 
long a time. It was very good of you to take up the cudgels on my behalf with the 
critic who reviewed Labour and Refreshment in THE BUILDER, but his strictures 
on my views on the Companionage are not the section to which I take most serious 
exception. His last paragraph on the Passing of the Operatives contains, I am sorry 
to say, a deliberate distortion of the facts set out by me, an action I consider most 
discreditable to any reviewer, much more to a Brother Mason. 


His phrase is this: "The production of a Minute Book of the Warrington Operative 
Stone Masons' Society, founded in 1832, is not evidence of the earlier existence of 
the Operative Ritual, and will fail to convince the critics of the merits of Bro. 
Stretton's views as Bro. Ward scornfully anticipates." 


From this the reader of the review is entitled to believe that the only evidence of 
the existence of Operative rituals is this Minute Book of the Warrington Lodge, 



whereas any person reading my article will find that the Minute Book was merely 
one of the corroborative pieces of evidence I produced. 


Far from this being the only evidence, I quote from the actual rituals, still 
preserved in the archives of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers. 
The first of these is a written document of uncertain date but clearly preceding 
1834, when it was replaced by printed rituals, and I print long extracts from it. The 
second document consists of a small eight page pamphlet entitled, "The Initiation 
Parts of the Friendly Society of Operative Freemasons." It was printed about 1833 
or 1834. The proceedings are mostly in prose and shortened, whereas in the third 
document, another printed ritual of about the same date, there are verses, as there 
are in the written manuscript. 


My article also quoted from R. W. Postgate, "The Builders' History," who likewise 
has definite references to certain ceremonies of initiation. Postgate is a Trade 
Union Official, not a Speculative Freemason, and somewhat contemptuous of us. 


In addition I dealt with the evidence of Mr. William Williams, General Secretary 
of the Operative Stone Masons and Quarrymen, who not only showed that 
initiation ceremonies connected with a skeleton had at one time formed part of the 
Operative Trade Union System, but added that there were still secret rites carried 
out by the Quarrymen of Portland. 


These were the facts on which my article was based, the testimony of a living 
witness and of three definite documents, whose exact whereabouts at the present 
moment I disclosed, thus enabling any critic to check my statements with the 
originals, and this reviewer, because they would tell against his line of criticism 
carefully ignores them, thus deliberately misleading anyone who has not seen the 
article itself. 



Quite candidly it seems to me that THE BUILDER is so utterly biased that it is 
waste of time to expect any attempt at fair criticism at its hands. 


I should like you to get the book and read the article for yourself and see whether 
my strictures are not fully justified. If you are subsequently moved to write to the 
Editor on the point you would be doing a real service to Masonic Research. There 
are two schools of Research, the old one, the so-called Authentic School, to which 
the Editor of THE BUILDER seems to belong, and the new School of 
Anthropological Research, to which I belong, but a paper of the position of THE 
BUILDER should at least refrain from making deliberate mis-statements, or if you 
like, at any rate, misleading statements. 


Sincerely and fraternally, 
J S M Ward 


Bro. Ward is quite correct in asserting that he has produced evidence of the 
existence of a ceremony among Operative masons in the year 1832 - possibly a 
little earlier, and if this was the purpose of the article under discussion, he would 
be fully justified in his complaint. But he sought to prove, by the same evidence, 
the continuous existence of operative lodges, with ceremonial forms, from the pre- 
Grand Lodge era "up to 1832." Your reviewer found nothing in "The Passing of the 
Operatives" to strengthen the claim "for the truth of Stretton, and those like him, 
who claimed that they had found the dying remnants of genuine Operative pre- 
Grand Lodge Masonry." It was the particular emphasis which Bro. Ward laid upon 
the Minute Book of the Warrington Operative Stone Masons' Society, and the 
appeal he made to the magic of the name Warrington that prompted the criticism. 


As to the MS. and Printed Rituals submitted by Bro. Ward, Mr. Sidney Webb, in 
his "History of Trade Unionism" finds them "nearly identical with those adopted 
by many of the national unions of the period, and [they] were largely adopted by 
the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of 1834." Mr. Webb agrees with 
Mr. Postgate, quoted by Bro. Ward, in thinking that the Ritual was borrowed from 



the Woolcombers' Union. Indeed, a similar ritual was published in Character and 
Effects of Trades Unions (1834) as that used by the Woolcombers. Further, there 
was a striking resemblance between the ceremonies, etc., of the Leeds Clothiers' 
Union, established about 1831, and those of the Builders' Union, the predecessor of 
the Operative Stone Masons' Society. Mr. Webb quotes a statement by a John 
Tester, who had been a leader of the Bradford Woolcombers' Union in 1825, and 
who published a series of letters in the Leeds Mercury of June and July, 1834, that 
"the mode of initiation was the same as practised for years before by the flannel 
weavers of Rochdale, with a party of whom the thing, in the shape it then was, had 
at first originated. A great part of the ceremony, particularly the death scene, was 
taken from the ceremonial of one division of the Oddfellows . . . and all that could 
be well turned from the rules and lectures of one society into the regulations of the 
others was so turned with some trifling alterations." In another letter Tester says 
the writer of the lecture book was Mark Warde. Mr. Webb says that Tester is not 
implicitly to be believed ' but that it seems probable that the rites of the unions 
were copied from those of an Oddfellows' Lodge, with some recollections of 
Freemasonry. 


A. J. B. M. 


[We have always thought that the distinction Bro. Ward has in mind, which he first 
suggested in his interesting and provocative work Freemasonry and the Ancient 
Gods, would be more accurately and happily expressed by the terms Historic and 
Comparative. Masonic research would be greatly impoverished if the comparative 
method was barred. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that it can never give 
the same degree of certainty that the historical method does, though to balance this 
its scope is much more extensive. 


We would like to say once more that THE BUILDER is not responsible for the 
opinions expressed by our reviewers, and we are sure that there is not one of them 
but would properly resent any editorial dictation in regard to the way in which they 
were to deal with a work submitted to them for criticism. 



Those interested in the subject of discussion may be referred to the article in THE 
BUILDER August and September, 1925, by Bro. Springett, and that by Bro. 
Meekren in November and December of the same year. Bro. Rippon also 
contributed an article to the discussion in February of the following year. Ed.] 


* * * 


THE PAPAL ORDER OF MALTA IN THE U. S. A. 


The following Associated Press dispatches from New York clear up two points in 
regard to the Knights of Malta, or rather the Roman Catholic branch of the Knights 
of Malta, to wit: (1) that the Roman branch has established a chapter in the United 
States and (2) that in Europe only noblemen are members of this order. 


As we know there are two other active branches of this order, one in Berlin 
dominated by the Hobenzollems, and one in London of which King George V is 
the head. There is also a branch at Vienna, now somewhat dormant, controlled by 
the house of Hapsburg-Lothringin. These branches are all legitimate and trace their 
origin back to the first founding of the order at Jerusalem during the first crusade. 
One has no precedence over another. It was founded as a charitable order and is 
known officially as the "Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem." It is also 
known as the "Knights of Rhodes" and the "Sovereign Order of the Knights of 
Malta." The Knights are also known as the "Hospitallers." The Knights of Malta is 
one of the oldest, proudest and most influential orders in the world. No one can 
belong to it in the Old World except a mighty nobleman, or in the New World 
except a mighty personage. 


Of course there are the Masonic Knights of Malta, as there are the Knights 
Templar, and Knights and Princes of the Scottish Rite, but no historian wants to go 
into their history if he does not want the non-historians to call him all kinds of 
names and turn their backs upon him. The first dispatch is as follows: 



New York, Saturday, April 7 - Cardinal Hayes has been informed by cable from 
Rome that he has been named grand protector of the American chapter of the 
Knights of Malta by decree of Prince Thuri, sovereign grand master of the order. 


The Knights of Malta is a Catholic charitable organization and the American 
chapter was created last year by Pope Pius XI. In Europe only noblemen are 
members of the order. 


The second dispatch which is from Rome, seems to confirm my idea that the 
Roman Catholic Knights of Malta are for the purpose primarily of assisting 
charities at Rome. If this is true the European streams have become so dried up 
since the war that the Pope has found it necessary to tap the golden streams of 
America. 


Rome, Tuesday, April 10 - Pope Pius today received John J. Raskob, chairman of 
the finance committee of General Motors. Mr. Raskob is a charter member of the 
American chapter of the Knights of Malta. 


The pontiff expressed deep appreciation for the contribution of the Knights of 
Malta for the upkeep of the Hospital of the Infant Jesus in Rome, in which the 
Pope is extremely interested. Since this gift of 500,000 lire (about $25,000) the 
institution has been able to care for 400 instead of 240 poor Roman children. 


Should you consider it advisable to give the readers of THE BUILDER more 
information on this subject you are at liberty to publish this letter. 


Burton E Bennett Washington. 



PLURAL AND SINGULAR 


On page 106 of the April, 1928, number of THE BUILDER Bro. Meekren 
intimates that blaest-belg is a later form than blaest-bel. The latter is only a scribal 
blunder. He says Zange and Galgen are plural forms. The brother is mistaken. 
Galgen happens to have the same form in both numbers, but so do sheep, deer, fish 
and many others. 


Chester N. Gould, Illinois. 


I must thank Bro. Gould for pointing out the regrettable "scribal blunder" in the 
article referred to. "Blaest-bel (i) g" is what should have appeared. Though even 
then the final "g" is only representative of the Old English letter. 


In regard to Galgen I fear I must leave Bro. Gould to fight it out with the 
dictionaries. Deutsches Worterbuch of the brothers Grimm seems to bear out the 
statement that Galgen is a plural form with a singular (as well as plural) meaning. 
Galge is said to be the Middle High German form of the word, and that Galgen is 
the neuhochdeutsch; but it is added that it "is still also galge in the 17th century 
[aber auch galge im, 17 jahrh.]." 


Zange I willingly withdraw; it was suggested as a plural form and I accepted it 
without sufficient consideration. Really it heips my general contention that the 
idiom under discussion is especially an idiosyncrasy of the English language. 



In regard to sheep, deer and fish, and similar words, I should describe them as 
singular forms from which, for the sake of euphony (or some other reason), the 
plural ending has been dropped. "Sheeps," or rather "ships," is still current usage in 
English dialect, however. The plural form "fishes" is in common use together with 
the uninflected form, and it would not be easy to formulate a definite rule as to 
where one should be used and not the other. I have also frequently heard the plural 
"deers" among country people, which I am inclined to think is a survival of old 
usage. Shakespeare uses the form "trouts" which is now never used by educated 
people. 


A is obvious that in dealing with words of this anomalous character it is quite 
possible to class them in different ways according to the point of view. The group 
of words dealt with in my article I should describe as plural in form, while those 
like "deer" and "sheep" are singular in form, though the two groups are alike in that 
the one form serves for both singular and plural meanings. 


R. J. M. 


* * * 


THE CORRECT FORM OF THE SQUARE 


There has been a discussion among some of the brethren in our lodge as to the 
right shape of the Mason's square. One brother says that it is wrong to have it 
marked with inches as that is a carpenter's square. I would like to know what you 
think about it. 


T H. P. Illinois. 



This question was dealt with in the Study Club for December, 1926, and February, 
1927, in the series of articles on the "Precious Jewels." We expect the brother who 
thinks there is an essential difference between the carpenter's and Mason's squares 
derived his opinion indirectly (if not directly) from what Albert Mackey says in his 
Encyclopaedia. We give the passage in full: 


SQUARE. This is one of the most important and significant symbols in 
Freemasonry. As such, it is proper that its true form should be preserved. The 
French Masons have almost universally given it with one leg longer than the other, 
thus making it a carpenter's square. The American Masons, following the 
delineations of Jeremy L. Cross, have, while generally preserving the equality of 
length in the legs, unnecessarily marked its surface with inches, thus making it an 
instrument for measuring length and breadth, which it is not. It is simply the trying 
square of a stonemason, and has a plain surface, the sides or legs embracing an 
angle of ninety degrees, and is intended only to test the accuracy of the sides of a 
stone, and to see that its edges subtend the same angle. 


This is one of the occasions when this eminent student ventured into a field beyond 
his own knowledge, and attempted to decide a matter of fact from insufficient data. 
For actually there is not, and never has been, any essential difference between the 
squares used by carpenters and stone workers. At least not such differences as 
Mackey assumes. He seems to imply that French Masons were guilty of an 
innovation in making the square with unequal limbs. This is rather funny, because 
the French (and the Masons of Europe generally) have merely maintained the 
original form, while English speaking Masonry, or rather the designers of Masonic 
jewels and furnishings in English speaking countries, have introduced a new form 
for the sake, apparently, of its greater symmetry. From Mediaeval times up till the 
end of the eighteenth century all representations of Mason's squares show one limb 
longer than the other. In looking over a series of Masonic designs of different dates 
it is possible to observe the gradual lengthening of the shorter limb and the 
shortening of the longer one, till it is sometimes difficult to be certain at first 
glance if there be any difference between them. 



There is absolutely no difference in the use of the square in different crafts. In all 
the square is used to test work, but also to set it out. And a square with a graduated 
scale on it is at times just as great a convenience for the stonemason as for the 
carpenter. When workmen made their own squares there would be no uniformity in 
size or proportions, and very few would be graduated, though apparently this was 
sometimes done. It is rather curious that the cut which illustrates this article in 
Mackey's Encyclopaedia actually shows a square with one limb longer than the 
other. 


* * * 


BOOKS WANTED 


I would like to obtain a copy of The Unwritten Word by Dr. Marsh. I do not know 
where it was published but if any readers of THE BUILDER know where a copy 
can be obtained I should be very glad to hear from them. 


J. R. Williams, Enterprise, Miss. 


Another correspondent would like to obtain a copy of Letters on Masonry and 
Anti-Masonry Addressed to the Hon. John Quincy Adams, published in 1832; and 
yet another would like to obtain Symbols and Legends of Freemasonry by Finlay 
Finlay son.