Masonic Temple

“ For it is only after the decay and fall of this temple of life, which, as masons, we have been building, that from its ruins, deep beneath its foundations, and in the profound abyss of the grave, we find that divine truth, in the search for which life was spent, if not in vain, at least without success, and the mystic key to which death only could supply.
And now we know by this symbolism what is meant by masonic labor, which, too, is itself but another form of the same symbol. The search for the Word--to find divine Truth--this, and this only, is a mason's work, and the WORD is his reward. ”

“ But nothing is more undoubted in the science of Masonic symbolism than that the Temple was the representative of the world, purified by the Shekinah, or the Divine Presence. The world of the profane is without the Temple; the world of the initiated is within its sacred walls. Hence, to enter the temple, to pass within the porch, to be made a Mason, and to be born into the world of Masonic light, are all synonymous and convertible terms. ”

“ The gigantic Masonic Temple, at the north-east corner of State and Randolph street, deserves special mention. It towers skyward until its roof is almost lost in the clouds. The idea of a grand Masonic temple in Chicago is twenty years old, and western Masons are responsible for the erection of the superb structure, which is an everlasting honor to themselves and a credit to the city. The building, which is without doubt one of the finest in the world, was completed this spring. ”

“ In the investigation of the true meaning of every Masonic symbol and allegory, we must be governed by the single principle that the whole design of Freemasonry as a speculative science is the investigation of divine truth. To this great object everything is subsidiary. The Mason is, from the moment of his initiation as an Entered Apprentice, to the time at which he receives the full fruition of Masonic light, an investigator—a laborer in the quarry and the Temple—whose reward is to be Truth, and all the ceremonies and traditions of the Order tend to this ultimate design. ”

“ But the true ancient interpretation of the legend,--the universal masonic one,--for all countries and all ages, undoubtedly was, that the fate of the temple builder is but figurative of the pilgrimage of man on earth, through trials and temptations, through sin and sorrow, until his eventual fall beneath the blow of death and his final and glorious resurrection to another and an eternal life. ”

“ They know that all religions are but one story told in divers ways for peoples whose ideals differ but whose great purpose is in harmony with Masonic ideals. North, east, south and west stretch the diversities of human thought, and while the ideals of man apparently differ, when all is said and the crystallization of form with its false concepts is swept away, one basic truth remains: all existing things are Temple Builders, laboring for a single end. No true Mason can be narrow, for his Lodge is the divine expression of all broadness. There is no place for little minds in a great work. ”

“ All the signs of masonry without a figment of reality; every moral thing masquerades under an architectural aspect, in that "Temple made without hands" which is figured by a Freemasons' lodge in these days. But the significant point is that all these names and masonic emblems point to something real which existed at some long-past time, and, as far as regards the organization and nomenclature, we find the whole thing in its vital and actual working form in the Comacine Guild. ”

“ All who are attempting to attain mastery through constructive efforts are Masons at heart, regardless of religious sect or belief. A Mason is not necessarily a member of a lodge. In a broad sense, he is any person who daily tries to live the Masonic life, and to serve intelligently the needs of the Great Architect. The Masonic brother pledges himself to assist all other temple-builders in whatever extremity of life; and in so doing he pledges himself to every living thing, for they are all temple-builders, building more noble structures to the glory of the universal God. ”

“ Every true Mason has come into the realization that there is but one Lodge - that is, the Universe - and but one Brotherhood, composed of everything that moves or exists in any of the planes of Nature. He realizes that the Temple of Solomon is really the Temple of the Solar Man -Sol-Om-On - the King of the Universe manifesting through his three primordial builders. He realizes that his vow of brotherhood and fraternity is universal, and that mineral, plant, animal, and man are all included in the true Masonic Craft. ”

“ The idea, therefore, of making the temple a symbol of the body, is not exclusively masonic; but the mode of treating the symbolism by a reference to the particular temple of Solomon, and to the operative art engaged in its construction, is peculiar to Freemasonry. It is this which isolates it from all other similar associations. Having many things in common with the secret societies and religious Mysteries of antiquity, in this "temple symbolism" it differs from them all. ”

“ The object of Freemasonry was represented under the form of Solomon’s Temple, as a type of the true Church, whose cornerstone is Christ. This Temple is to be built of men, or living stones: and the true method and art of building with men it is the province of magic to teach. Hence it is that all the masonic symbols either refer to Solomon’s Temple, or are figurative modes of expressing the ideas and doctrines of magic in the sense of the Rosicrucians, and their mystical predecessors in general. ”

“ Every man and Mason who places into this Foundation a stone assists in building a real temple wherein will be preserved the truths that antiquity has left as our inheritance. We who have the fragments of missing history have this opportunity. It is a Masonic opportunity to which the writer as a student of anthropology, respectfully invites your interest. ”

“ Those who are surrounded with knowledge and opportunity for self-improvement and make nothing of these opportunities are the lazy workmen who will be spiritually, if not physically, cast out of the temple of the king.
The Masonic order is not a mere social organization, but is composed of all those who have banded themselves together to learn and apply the principles of mysticism and the occult rites. ”

“ Masonic tradition informs us that at the building of King Solomon's Temple, fifteen Fellow Crafts discovering that the Temple was almost finished, and not having the Master Mason's word, became very impatient, and entered into a horrid conspiracy to extort the Master Mason's word from their Grand Master, Hiram Abiff, the first time they met him alone, or take his life, that they might pass as Masters in other countries, and receive wages as such ”

“ They, with the utmost jealousy, practised all the arts connected with building, and by severe laws and penalties (perhaps also with bloodshed) prohibited others from the practice of building important edifices. Long and hard were the initiations to aspirants, mysterious were the meetings and the teaching, and to ennoble themselves they dated their origin from Solomon's Temple." This monopoly would account for none of the Communes having a civic guild of architecture ”

“ The columns of the nave are all of antique marble, the ruins of a Roman temple to Ceres at Pisa; some are of cipollino, others Oriental granite, one is of fluted white Greek marble. The capitals are mostly antique and classical, though a few show the hand of the early Comacine in their straight upstanding volutes. The ingenuity of the Magistri in making use of old material is shown in the various devices by which these columns are adapted. Where they are too short the base is raised on two pedestals ”

“ Masonry, as it is much more than a political party or a social cult, is also more than a church—unless we use the word church as Ruskin used it when he said: "There is a true church wherever one hand meets another helpfully, the only holy or mother church that ever was or ever shall be!" It is true that Masonry is not a religion, but it is Religion, a worship in which all good men may unite, that each [251] may share the faith of all. Often it has been objected that some men leave the Church and enter the Masonic Lodge, finding there a religious home. ”

“ That is to say, Masonry is too great an institution to have been made in a day, much less by a few men, but was a slow evolution through long time, unfolding its beauty as it grew. Indeed, it was like one of its own cathedrals upon which one generation of builders wrought and vanished, and another followed, until, amidst vicissitudes of time and change, of decline and revival, the order itself became a temple of Freedom and Fraternity—its history a disclosure of its innermost soul in the natural process of its transition from actual architecture to its "more noble and glorious purpose." ”

“ And what wonder that man's thankfulness for freedom first took the form of building churches for the glory of the God of the free?
The architects of the Masonic loggie (lodges) who had held together through the troublous times, became alive with new enthusiasms. They compared their own buildings with others, and instead of varying the principles of Vitruvius, to suit early Christian demands as heretofore, 178 they passed on to new and freer lines. Instead of solid and rude strength, elegance of form and aspiring lines gave lightness and beauty. ”

“ There seems little doubt that the German lodges founded by the Comacine emigrations took root, and became in time entirely national. Traditions are many, and most of them point back to Italy. For instance, legend says a brotherhood of stone-carvers existed in Spires and Bamberg from the time when those cathedrals were begun. Others say that Albertus Magnus on his return from Padua formed the first Masonic association in Germany, making special laws and obtaining especial privileges for the immense number of builders he collected to put into execution his cathedral at Cologne. ”

“ It would not surprise us to find the masons here to-morrow morning, or the sculptor, with mallet and chisel, carrying on that band of lotus buds and bees. Far more difficult is it to believe that they all struck work forever some two-and-twenty centuries ago.
Here and there, where the foundations have been disturbed, one sees that the columns are constructed of sculptured blocks, the fragments of some earlier temple; while, at a height of about six feet from the ground, a Greek cross cut deep into the side of the shaft stamps upon each pillar the seal of Christian worship. ”

“ It is in the same way that in Masonry the plumb represents rectitude, the level, human equality, and the trowel, concord or harmony. Each is, in itself, independent, each expresses a single elementary idea.
But we now arrive at a higher division of masonic symbolism, which, passing beyond these tangible symbols, brings us to those which are of a more abstruse nature, and which, as being developed in a ceremonial form, controlled and directed by the ritual of the order, may be designated as the ritualistic symbolism of Freemasonry. ”

“ He is Adonis destroyed by the wild boar, Osiris put to death by Typhon, Pythagoras in his proscription, Orpheus torn to pieces by Bacchantes, Moses abandoned in the caverns of Mount Nebo, Jesus crucified by Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate. Now those are true Masons who seek persistently to rebuild the Temple in accordance with the plan of Hiram.
Such is the great and the chief legend of Masonry; there are others that are no less beautiful and no less profound; but we do not feel justified in divulging their mysteries. ”

“ The institution of Freemasonry preceded the advent of Christianity. Its symbols and its legends are derived from the Solomonic temple, and from the people even anterior to that. Its religion comes from the ancient priesthood. Its faith was that primitive one of Noah and his immediate descendants. If Masonry were simply a Christian institution, the Jew and the Moslem, the Brahmin and the Buddhist, could not conscientiously partake of its illumination; but its universality is its boast. In its language citizens of every nation may converse; at its altar men of all religions may kneel ”

“ Some had dropped off long since, and new suckers formed in the painting academies, and the sculptors' companies, at Siena, Florence, Venice, and other parts. These suckers had, by the fifteenth century, grown into independent plants, that threatened to overshadow and choke the ancient trunk. Art knowledge of all kinds had now become dispersed outside the jealous custody of the once secret Freemasonry, and the Cinque-cento artist stood alone on his own merit, without needing the cachet of the Masonic title of Magister. ”

“ He imagines that the objection to Christian imagery in the ritual was due to enmity to Christianity. Not so. Masonry was not then, and has never at any time been, opposed to Christianity, or to any other religion. Far from it. But Christianity in those days—as, alas, too often now—was another name for a petty and bigoted sectarianism; and Masonry by its very genius was, and is, unsectarian. Many Masons then were devout Christians, as they are now—not a few clergymen—but the order itself is open to men of all faiths, Catholic and Protestant, Hebrew and Hindu, who confess faith in God ”