The Builders

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stood as a witness for the life of the spirit. In the war of the soul against dust, in the
choice between dirt and Deity, it has allied itself on the side of the great idealisms and
optimisms of humanity. It takes the spiritual view of life and the world as being most
in accord with the facts of experience, the promptings of right reason, and the voice of
conscience. In other words, it dares to read the meaning of the universe through what
is highest in man, not through what is lower, asserting that the soul is akin to the
Eternal Spirit, and that by a life of righteousness its eternal quality is revealed.* Upon
this philosophy Masonry rests, and finds a rock beneath:
On Him, this corner-stone we build,
On Him, this edifice erect;
And still, until this work's fulfilled,
May He the workman's ways direct.
(* Read the great argument of Plato in The Republic (book vi). The present writer
does not wish to impose upon Masonry any dogma of technical Idealism, subjective,
objective. Or otherwise. No more than others does he hold to a static universe which
unrolls in time a plan made out before, but to a world of wonders where life has the
risk and zest of adventure. He rejoices in the New Idealism of Rudolf Eucken, with its
gospel of "an independent spiritual life" independent, that is, of vicissitude and its
insistence upon the fact that the meaning of life depends upon our "building up within
ourselves a life that is not of time" (Life's Basis and Life's Ideal). But the intent of
these pages is, rather, to emphasize the spiritual view of life and the world as the
philosophy underlying Masonry, and upon which it builds the reality of the ideal, its
sovereignty over our fragile human life, and the immutable necessity of loyalty to it, if
we are to build for eternity. After all, as Plotinus said, philosophy "serves to point the
way and guide the traveller; the vision is for him who will see it." But the direction
means much to those who are seeking the truth to know it.)
Now, consider! All our human thinking, whether it be in science, philosophy, or
religion, rests for its validity upon faith in the kinship of man with God. If that faith
be false, the temple of human thought falls to wreck, and behold! we know not
anything and have no way of learning. But the fact that the universe is intelligible,
that we can follow its forces, trace its laws, and make a map of it, finding the infinite
even in the infinitesimal, shows that the mind of man is akin to the Mind that made it.
Also, there are two aspects of the nature of man which lift him above the brute and
bespeak his divine heredity. They are reason and conscience, both of which are of
more than sense and time, having their source, satisfaction, and authority in an
unseen, eternal world. That is to say, man is a being who, if not actually immortal, is
called by the very law and necessity of his being to live as if he were immortal.
Unless life be utterly abortive, having neither rhyme nor reason, the soul of man is
itself the one sure proof and prophet of its own high faith.
Consider, too, what it means to say that this mighty soul of man is akin to the Eternal
Soul of all things. It means that we are not shapes of mud placed here by chance, but
sons of the Most High, citizens of eternity, deathless as God our Father is deathless;
and that there is laid upon us an abiding obligation to live in a manner befitting the
dignity of the soul. It means that what a man thinks, the parity of his feeling, the
character of his activity and career are of vital and ceaseless concern to the Eternal.
Here is a philosophy which lights up the universe like a sunrise, confirming the dim,
dumb certainties of the soul, evolving meaning out of mystery, and hope out of what
would else be despair. It brings out the colors of human life, investing our fleeting
mortal years brief at their longest, broken at its best with enduring significance
and beauty. It gives to each of us, however humble and obscure, a place and a part in
the stupendous historical enterprise; makes us fellow workers with the Eternal in His
redemptive making of humanity, and binds us to do His will upon earth as it is done in
heaven. It subdues the intellect; it softens the heart; it begets in the will that sense of
self-respect without which high and heroic living cannot be. Such is the philosophy
upon which Masonry builds; and from it flow, as from the rock smitten in the
wilderness, those bright streams that wander through and water this human world of
ours.
III
Because this is so; because the human soul is akin to God, and is endowed with
powers to which no one may set a limit, it is and of right ought to be free. Thus, by
the logic of its philosophy, not less than the inspiration of its faith, Masonry has been
impelled to make its historic demand for liberty of conscience, for the freedom of the
intellect, and for the right of all men to stand erect, unfettered, and unafraid, equal
before God and the law, each respecting the rights of his fellows. What we have to
remember is, that before this truth was advocated by any order, or embodied in any
political constitution, it was embedded in the will of God and the constitution of the
human soul. Nor will Masonry ever swerve one jot or tittle from its ancient and
eloquent demand till all men, everywhere, are free in body, mind, and soul. As it is,
Lowell was right when he wrote:
We are not free: Freedom doth not consist
In musing with our faces toward the Past
While petty cares and crawling interests twist
Their spider threads about us, which at lastGrow strong as iron chains and cramp and
bind
In formal narrowness heart, soul, and mind.
Freedom is recreated year by year,
In hearts wide open on the Godward side,
In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere,
In minds that sway the future like a tide.
No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes;
She chooses men for her august abodes,
Building them fair and fronting to the dawn.
Some day, when the cloud of prejudice has been dispelled by the searchlight of truth,
the world will honor Masonry for its service to freedom of thought and the liberty of
faith. No part of its history has been more noble, no principle of its teaching has been
more precious than its age-long demand for the right and duty of every soul to seek
that light by which no man was ever injured, and that truth which makes man free.
Down through the centuries often in times when the highest crime was not murder,
but thinking, and the human conscience was a captive dragged at the wheel of the
ecclesiastical chariot always and everywhere Masonry has stood for the right of the
soul to know the truth, and to look up unhindered from the lap of earth into the face of
God. Not freedom from faith, but freedom of faith, has been its watchword, on the
ground that as despotism is the mother of anarchy, so bigoted dogmatism is the
prolific source of scepticism knowing, also, that our race has made its most rapid
advance in those fields where it has been free the longest. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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