TWIN LIBERTIES OF MASONRY

MASONRY IN MANITOBA - 1949

Masonry is an attitude to life. Its landmarks cannot be located
precisely because they mark, or delimit, areas of conduct in action,
apprehension in the mental world and assurance on the planes of
the eternal. It accepts the ancient adage "as above, so below," but
so vast is this subject that articles and essays only nibble at it;
nothing but the leisurely flow of a book can elucidate, i.e. "shed
light upon," its significance. Only in the river of organized
discussion that a good book affords, can gold of truth be gleaned in
satisfactory quantity. The "man of few words" is not the ideal
teacher for the regular run of people. He is apt to be too condensed
in expression, too crystallized in phrase for the ear of people whose
attention is assaulted by a thousand distractions. His wisdom,
dropping from his lips like nuggets, is more suited to devoted
disciples who have forsaken all else to attend upon him. The
tongue-tied man is too apt to speak in aphorisms that sound
dogmatic in headings and sub-titles that are too concentrated a fare
for ready absorption. But the speaker who can bear us along on a
slow current of words, saying and repeating in a variety of ways
his thoughts, he is the more effective teacher. So it is that only in
books of generous proportions can we gather up the sense and
feeling of so abstract a philosophy as Masonry propounds.

The great books on Masonry are in general agreement that the
Craft is, either in fact or implication, an "overlay" of many
civilizations. Wherever we dig we come upon layer after layer of
preceding cultures. It contains traces of Mithraism, of Gnosticism,
of the early mystic church and shows a benevolent face toward
non-doctrinal and simple awareness of Deity. It is a deep boring
through many strata of human concepts, but always in every layer
it shows a sublimity of moral responsibility.

It is established that the most unusual characteristic of the early
Freemasons was, as the name stresses, their freedom. Whereas in
the matters of wages, conditions and travelling, the local workers
were decidedly not free but rather in bondage to lords or civic
governors, the Free-masons owed allegiance only to their Order,
made their own terms and went where they wished. This could
only be possible to men who were masters of their profession and
members of a revered Society. They were Masters, "magistri," of
building, of geology, of sculpture, painting and physics; not each
in all these arts, but each in his own ability, and besides or because
of his mastery of one or more of these great subjects, the individual
master possessed a breadth of culture not available to the local
workers, but rather kept exclusively for the aristocrary.

Though we speak of the Free-masons in the plural it is not as
individuals we should think of them but always as an Order, this
being supported by the fact that no individual names have been
passed down to us, however admirable the work, and also by the
fact that changes in style took place all over Europe, concurrently.
They were wont to follow the banners of the Church when and
where the great missionaries decided to build those majestic fanes,
but the skill and science and beauty was not from the founding
fathers, not from the monks, who sometimes claimed the honor
(and it must be remembered that monks did most of the history-
writing) but the product of intensive study in secret depositaries of
teaching, in secluded centres such as Switzerland, the Pyrenees and
the Piedmontese lakes provided, where books of priceless erudition
enshrined the geometry of Egypt, the physics of Babylonia and the
canons of proportion of Greece, since lost to the world by the
tragedy of the Alexandrian holocaust and the book-burnings of the
Middle Ages.

That the masters used Signs, Tokens and Oaths is quite
understandable and from the earliest centuries of our era come
allusions to "Solomon" and the "lion-grip." The one perhaps to
refer to the source and centre of their Order, the other to recognize
and honor each Brother. In guarding their secrets even to the death
they preserved their freedom, for no man would gain those secrets
from a master by any criminal coercion, it was useless to try, and,
moreover would rebound on his head by the solid antagonism of
the whole fraternity.

The characteristic of freedom which distinguished the old magistri
is preserved in Masonry by the twin freedoms of religious
preference and of the soul. Freedom of religious preference in
demanding only the belief in an over-ruling consciousness which
consequently ordains the triumph of righteousness, and freedom of
the soul as a consequence, from the fetters of fear and the terrors of
doubt.

Masonry, being Free or Speculative, we apply the forms of the
tools to our morals, and it is just the "free man" who must do this.
The bondman has it done for him!

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