Masonry

“ It shone in their symbols, as it does in all symbols that have any meaning or beauty. It is, indeed, the soul of symbolism, every emblem being an effort to express a reality too great for words.
So, then, Masonry is mystical as music is mystical—like poetry, and love, and faith, and prayer, and all else that makes it worth our time to live; but its mysticism is sweet, sane, and natural, far from fantastic, and in nowise eerie, unreal, or unbalanced. Of course these words fail to describe it, as all words must, and it is therefore that Masonry uses parables, pictures, and symbols. ”

“ The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of perils passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come. ”

“ In all civilized lands, and among folk of every creed worthy of the name, Masonry is found—and everywhere it upholds all the redeeming ideals of humanity, making all good things better by its presence, like a stream underflowing a meadow. [161] Also, wherever Masonry flourishes and is allowed to build freely after its divine design, liberty, justice, education, and true religion flourish; and where it is hindered, they suffer. ”

“ Who but a poet would have stripped in fancy the masonry from the cloud-touching monoliths, and viewed the naked pipings, twisting and elbowing, bending and rearing, more wonderful than any magic beanstalk—water and power and light! ”

“ Here, then, are the real foundations of Masonry, both material and moral: in the deep need and aspiration of man, and his creative impulse; in his instinctive Faith, his quest of the Ideal, and his love of the Light. Underneath all his building lay the feeling, prophetic of his last and highest thought, that the earthly house of his life should be in right relation with its heavenly prototype, the world-temple—imitating on earth the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. If he erected a square temple, it was an image of the earth ”

“ Those who give man the things he needs, while seldom appreciated in their own age, are later recognized as the Saviors of the human race. Masonry is a structure built upon experience. Each stone is a sequential step in the unfolding of intelligence. The shrines of Masonry are ornamented by the jewels of a thousand ages; its rituals ring with the words of enlightened seers and illuminated sages. A hundred religions have brought their gifts of wisdom to its altar. Arts and sciences unnumbered have contributed to its symbolism. ”

“ But the grand old keep still rears its rectangular mass behind and far above the later masonry, and when the evening sun shines upon it, the stones, no longer gray, wear again their bright colour of six or seven centuries ago. Presently, as the glow moves higher, the battlements and machicolations take a golden clearness that marks every detail against the blue depth of sky whose fire is fading and preparing to change into the calm splendour that mingles with the dusk. ”

“ Their masonry enduring, the grand Wall
Which kept the Pict abeyant, o’er which frowned
The Roman legions, ready one and all,
From east to west, to keep this ancient bound
From foot incursive, where’er foot might fall. ”

“ The rough walls have stood in this lonely spot for many centuries. The door is open, and we may see for ourselves the strange state of the masonry within, whose builders, when they left it thus rugged and unplastered, little thought that its unfinished appearance would be tenderly cherished by the antiquarians of a future age. A rare rood-loft of oak divides the tiny chancel from the nave. ”

“ Repairing thither at the appointed time, we first pass through a grove of stately trees, the soothing murmur of whose rustling leaves brings peace and quiet into the hearts of those who mourn and gather to pay the last tribute. Within the grove stands a massive building of gray masonry whose architecture shows no striving after ornamental effect, and whose solid proportions give a sense of eternal permanency. ”

“ From another jagged piece of masonry that formed part of the wall the blue skirt of a child flapped desolately over the sidewalk. We left the market building and stood in the center of the square looking down the six streets that emptied into it. They were narrow, winding streets, and we could not see far. But in all we could see the ruin—the crumbled masonry and walls blackened by fire. ”

“ Such is Masonry, which unites all these high interests and brings to their service a vast, world-wide fraternity of free and devout men, built upon a foundation of [243] spiritual faith and moral idealism, whose mission it is to make men friends, to refine and exalt their lives, to deepen their faith and purify their dream, to turn them from the semblance of life to homage for truth, beauty, righteousness, and character. More than an institution, more than a tradition, more than a society, Masonry is one of the forms of the Divine Life upon earth. ”

“ The oldest masonry, with its delicate tracery of four arches and three trefoiled roses to each arcade, seems to have been virtually eaten away by time. New leaves and moldings are being set to-day to replace the old. The pure white, native stone, so easy to carve into spirited crockets and vigorous strings similar to the old, stands out beside the sooty, time-worn blocks, as the fresh sweetness of a child's cheek laid against the weather-beaten furrows of the grand-parent. ”

“ Even so it has been, all through our national history, and today Masonry is worth more for the sanctity and safety of this republic than both its army and its navy. At every turn of events, when the rights of man have been threatened by enemies obvious or insidious, it has stood guard—its altar lights like signal fires along the heights of liberty, keeping watch. ”

“ Notwithstanding the wholesale pillage of centuries, enough in the way of chambers and baths, marble statues, pillars, and works of art, still remains in this mountainous mass of masonry to witness to the unparalleled luxury by which the strength of the Roman youth was enervated, and the foundations of the empire sapped. ”

“ One would think, after reading their endless essays, that the symbols of Masonry were loved and preserved by all the world—except by the Masons themselves. Often these writers imply, if they do not actually assert, that our order begged, borrowed, or cribbed its emblems from Kabbalists or Rosicrucians, whereas the truth is exactly the other way round—those impalpable fraternities, whose vague, fantastic thought was always seeking a local habitation and a body, making use of the symbols of Masonry the better to reach the minds of men. ”

“ It is astonishing how the airy lightness and grace of these pillars relieve the immense mass of masonry, spare the bare walls the necessity of ornament, and make the ponderous roof light as a tent. There is here the trace of a law of which our modern architects seem to be ignorant. Large masses of masonry are always oppressive in their effect; they suggest pain and labor, and the Saracens, even more than the Greeks, seem to have discovered the necessity of introducing a sportive, fanciful element, which shall express the delight of the workman in his work. ”

“ So, then, that masonry will be generally the most magnificent which, without the rise of materials systematically small or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. ”

“ Outside of the home and the house of God there is nothing in this world more beautiful than the Spirit of Masonry. Gentle, gracious, and wise, its mission is to form mankind into a great redemptive brotherhood, a league of noble and free men enlisted in the radiant enterprise of working out in time the love and will of the Eternal. Who is sufficient to describe a spirit so benign? With what words may one ever hope to capture and detain that which belongs of right to the genius of poetry and song, by whose magic those elusive and impalpable realities find embodiment and voice? ”

“ Some of the foundation masonry of the little capital building and of the tiny treasury, an occasional column of stone or brick, beaten and battered, rows of trees still growing in regular order as they were planted nearly a century ago and a cemetery with its stained and blackened marble remain to indicate that this was once a spot inhabited by a refined community. ”

“ Long and straggling, and too narrow to admit of any but foot-passengers, its dwellings are marked by a degree of poverty and destitution even greater than such quarters usually exhibit. Rudely constructed of fragments taken from ancient temples and monuments, richly carved architraves and finely cut friezes are to be seen embedded amid masses of crumbling masonry, and all the evidences of a cultivated and enlightened age mingled up with the squalor and misery of present want. ”

“ Still less could a mere curiosity to learn certain signs and passwords have held such men for long, even in an age of quaint conceits in the matter of association and when architecture was affected as a fad. No, there is only one explanation: that these men saw in [169] Masonry a deposit of the high and simple wisdom of old, preserved in tradition and taught in symbols—little understood, it may be, by many members of the order—and this it was that they sought to bring to light, turning history into allegory and legend into drama, and making it a teacher of wise and beautiful truth. ”

“ Often in a building of various dates the tall light shafts of the thirteenth century rise to vast heights, and are as straight and truly worked as they were when first cut, looking indeed like one tall stone of matchless workmanship, while the masonry of the sixteenth century, especially if late, has begun to show its joints and to gape. ”

“ Architecture has gone far from the Salle Synodale of Sens and the Merveille of Mont-St.-Michel, and it has not gone altogether well, but how significant these stone fancies are of the abounding life and the splendid pride and the open-handed beneficence of the fifteenth-century burghers, who loved their towns and bent the rebellious masonry to their will, working it into a kind of stony lace and embroidery to the glory of trade and civic spirit! ”

“ There is massive masonry: the place was once handsomely built and decorated and held by warriors, but now all tumbled about; works of art exposed to view and forming a strange contrast with the desolation around; there is a wide pool of water, hot without fire ”

“ Masonry is the activity of closely united men who, employing symbolical forms borrowed principally from the mason's trade and from architecture, work for the welfare of mankind, striving morally to ennoble themselves and others, and thereby to bring about a universal league of mankind, which they aspire to exhibit even now on a small scale. ”

“ Ugly cracks in the miserable stucco show where the masonry is already parting, as the hollow foundations subside, and walls on which the paint is still almost fresh are shored up with dusty beams lest they should fall and crush the few paupers who dwell within. ”

“ XXV. That the Landmarks of Masonry can never be changed.
These constitute the Landmarks, or, as they have sometimes been called, "the body of Masonry," in which it is not in the power of any man, or body of men, to make the least innovation. ”

“ During the Middle Ages, as we know, men revelled in symbolism, often of the most recondite kind, and the emblems of Masonry are to be found all through the literature, art, and thought of that time. Not only on cathedrals, tombs, and monuments, where we should expect to come upon them, but in the designs and decorations of dwellings, on vases, pottery, and trinkets, in the water-marks used by paper-makers and printers, and even as initial letters in books—everywhere one finds the old, familiar emblems. ”

“ When a whole town passes, as Ypres and Louvain and Arras, then as it fell so let it lie. A kindly nature will slowly turn these bleak piles of fallen masonry into beautiful memorials, clothing them with grass and vines and flowers and trees. Let them stand so for ever, a memorial to the dead and a warning to man in his pride of life and insolence of will; and for the new cities, let them rise as beautifully as may be alongside, but not over, the graves of a dead era. ”

“ Not content to trace the evolution of Masonry, even so able a man as Albert Pike will have it that to a few men of intelligence who belonged to one of the four old lodges in 1717 "is to be ascribed the authorship of the Third Degree, and the introduction of Hermetic and other symbols into Masonry; that they framed the three degrees for the purpose of communicating their doctrines, veiled by their symbols, to those fitted to receive them, and gave to others trite moral explanations they could comprehend." ”

“ It proceeds from first to last upon the assurance that all that we need to do is to remove the scaffolding from the historic temple of Masonry and let it stand out in the sunlight, where all men can see its beauty and symmetry, and that it will command the respect of the most critical and searching intellects, as well as the homage of all who love mankind. By this faith the long study has been guided ”

“ The houses on both sides are the mansions in which the nobles, princes, and generals live, and are built of solid masonry. They are each one story high, with curled-up roofs, and here and there the military ensign may be seen flying. Facing us at the end, a pagoda-like structure, with two roofs, and one half of masonry, the upper part of lacquered wood, is the main entrance to the royal palace. ”