Part 31 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: Lyre]
XXII.
KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE OR PRINCE OF LIBa.n.u.s.
Sympathy with the great laboring cla.s.ses, respect for labor itself, and resolution to do some good _work_ in our day and generation, these are the lessons of this Degree, and they are purely Masonic. Masonry has made a working-man and his a.s.sociates the Heroes of her princ.i.p.al legend, and himself the companion of Kings. The idea is as simple and true as it is sublime. From first to last, Masonry is _work_. It venerates the Grand _Architect_ of the Universe. It commemorates the _building_ of a Temple. Its princ.i.p.al emblems are _the working tools_ of Masons and Artisans. It preserves the name of the first _worker_ in _bra.s.s_ and _iron_ as one of its pa.s.s-words. When the Brethren meet together, they are at _labor_. The Master is the _overseer_ who sets the craft to _work_ and gives them proper instruction. Masonry is the apotheosis of WORK.
It is the hands of brave, forgotten men that have made this great, populous, cultivated world a world for _us_. It is _all_ work, and _forgotten_ work. The _real_ conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors of every great and civilized land are all the heroic souls that ever were in it, each in his degree: all the men that ever felled a forest-tree or drained a marsh, or contrived a wise scheme, or did or said a true or valiant thing therein. Genuine work alone, done faithfully, is eternal, even as the Almighty Founder and World-builder Himself. All work is n.o.ble: a life of ease is not for any man, nor for any G.o.d. The Almighty Maker is not like one who, in old immemorial ages, having made his machine of a Universe, sits ever since, and sees it _go_. Out of that belief comes Atheism. The faith in an Invisible, Unnameable, Directing Deity, present everywhere in all that we see, and work, and suffer, is the essence of all faith whatsoever.
The life of all G.o.ds figures itself to us as a Sublime Earnestness,--of Infinite battle against Infinite labor Our highest religion is named the Wors.h.i.+p of Sorrow. For the Son of Man there is no n.o.ble crown, well-worn, or even ill-worn, but is a crown of thorns. Man's highest destiny is not to be happy, to love pleasant things and find them. His only true _un_happiness should be that he cannot work, and get his destiny as a man fulfilled. The day pa.s.ses swiftly over, our life pa.s.ses swiftly over, and the night cometh, wherein no man can work. That night once come, our happiness and unhappiness are vanished, and become as things that never were. But our work is not abolished, and has not vanished. It remains, or the want of it remains, for endless Times and Eternities.
Whatsoever of morality and intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of STRENGTH a man has in him, will lie written in the WORK he does. To work is to try himself against Nature and her unerring, everlasting laws: and they will return true verdict as to him. The n.o.blest Epic is a mighty Empire slowly built together, a mighty series of heroic deeds, a mighty conquest over chaos. Deeds are greater than words. They have a life, mute, but undeniable; and grow. They people the vacuity of Time, and make it green and worthy.
Labor is the truest emblem of G.o.d, the Architect and Eternal Maker; n.o.ble Labor, which is yet to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the highest Throne. Men without duties to do, are like trees planted on precipices; from the roots of which all the earth has crumbled. Nature owns no man who is not also a Martyr. She scorns the man who sits screened from all work, from want, danger, hards.h.i.+p, the victory over which is work; and has all his work and battling done by other men; and yet there are men who pride themselves that they and theirs have done no work time out of mind. So neither have the swine.
The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men, fronting the peril which frightens back all others, and if not vanquished would devour them. Hercules was wors.h.i.+pped for twelve labors. The Czar of Russia became a toiling s.h.i.+pwright, and worked with his axe in the docks of Saardam; and something came of that. Cromwell worked, and Napoleon; and effected somewhat.
There is a perennial n.o.bleness and even sacredness in work. Be he never so benighted and forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual Despair. Man perfects himself by working. Jungles are cleared away. Fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal, the man himself first ceases to be a foul unwholesome jungle and desert thereby. Even in the meanest sort of labor, the whole soul of man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the moment he begins to work.
Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, and even Despair shrink murmuring far off into their caves, whenever the man bends himself resolutely against his task. Labor is life. From the inmost heart of the worker rises his G.o.d-given Force, the Sacred Celestial Life-essence, breathed into him by Almighty G.o.d; and awakens him to all n.o.bleness, as soon as work fitly begins. By it man learns Patience, Courage, Perseverance, Openness to light, readiness to own himself mistaken, resolution to do better and improve. Only by labor will man continually learn the virtues. There is no Religion in stagnation and inaction; but only in activity and exertion. There was the deepest truth in that saying of the old monks, ”_laborare est orare_.” ”He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small;” and can man love except by working earnestly to benefit that being whom he loves?
”Work; and therein have well-being,” is the oldest of Gospels; unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, and enduring forever. To make Disorder, wherever found, an eternal enemy; to attack and subdue him, and make order of him, the subject not of Chaos, but of Intelligence and Divinity, and of ourselves; to attack ignorance, stupidity and brute-mindedness, wherever found, to smite it wisely and unweariedly, to rest not while we live and it lives, in the name of G.o.d, this is our duty as Masons; commanded us by the Highest G.o.d. Even He, with his unspoken voice, more awful than the thunders of Sinai, or the syllabled speech of the Hurricane, speaks to us. The Unborn Ages; the old Graves, with their long-moldering dust speak to us. The deep Death-Kingdoms, the Stars in their never-resting course, all s.p.a.ce and all Time, silently and continually admonish us that we too must work while it is called to-day. Labor, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. To toil, whether with the sweat of the brow, or of the brain or heart, is wors.h.i.+p,--the n.o.blest thing yet discovered beneath the Stars.
Let the weary cease to think that labor is a curse an doom p.r.o.nounced by Deity. Without it there could be no true excellence in human nature.
Without it, and pain, and sorrow, where would be the human virtues?
Where Patience, Perseverance, Submission, Energy, Endurance, Fort.i.tude, Bravery, Disinterestedness, Self-Sacrifice, the n.o.blest excellencies of the Soul?
Let him who toils complain not, nor feel humiliated! Let him look up, and see his fellow-workmen there, in G.o.d's Eternity; they alone surviving there. Even in the weak human memory, they long survive, as Saints, as Heroes, and as G.o.ds: they _alone_ survive, and people the unmeasured solitudes of Time.
To the primeval man, whatsoever good came, descended on him (as in mere fact, it ever does) direct from G.o.d; whatsoever duty lay visible for him, this a Supreme G.o.d had prescribed. For the primeval man, in whom dwelt Thought, this Universe was all a Temple, life everywhere a Wors.h.i.+p.
Duty is with us ever; and evermore forbids us to be idle. To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and t.i.tle. Ploughers, spinners and builders, inventors, and men of science, poets, advocates, and writers, all stand upon one common level, and form one grand, innumerable host, marching ever onward since the beginning of the world: each ent.i.tled to our sympathy and respect, each a man and our brother.
It was well to give the earth to man as a dark ma.s.s, whereon to labor.
It was well to provide rude and unsightly materials in the ore-bed and the forest, for him to fas.h.i.+on into splendor and beauty. It was well, not because of that splendor and beauty; but because the act creating them is better than the things themselves; because exertion is n.o.bler than enjoyment; because the laborer is greater and more worthy of honor than the idler. Masonry stands up for the n.o.bility of labor. It is Heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. It has been broken down for ages; and Masonry desires to build it up again. It has been broken down, because men toil only because they must, submitting to it as, in some sort, a degrading necessity; and desiring nothing so much on earth as to escape from it. They fulfill the great law of labor in the letter, but break it in the spirit: they fulfill it with the muscles, but break it with the mind.
Masonry teaches that every idler ought to hasten to some field of labor, manual or mental, as a chosen and coveted theatre of improvement; but he is not impelled to do so, under the teachings of an imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and blesses and glorifies himself in his idleness. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. To be ashamed of toil; of the dingy workshop and dusty labor-field; of the hard hand, stained with service more honorable than that of war; of the soiled and weather-stained garments, on which Mother Nature has stamped, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors; to be ashamed of these tokens and t.i.tles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity, is treason to Nature, impiety to Heaven, a breach of Heaven's great Ordinance. TOIL, of brain, heart, or hand, is the only true manhood and genuine n.o.bility.
Labor is a more beneficent ministration than man's ignorance comprehends, or his complainings will admit. Even when its end is hidden from him, it is not mere blind drudgery. It is all a training, a discipline, a development of energies, a nurse of virtues, a school of improvement. From the poor boy who gathers a few sticks for his mother's hearth, to the strong man who fells the oak or guides the s.h.i.+p or the steam-car, every human toiler, with every weary step and every urgent task, is obeying a wisdom far above his own wisdom, and fulfilling a design far beyond his own design.
The great law of human industry is this: that industry, working either with the hand or the mind, the application of our powers to some task, to the achievement of some result, lies at the foundation of all human improvement. We are not sent into the world like animals, to crop the spontaneous herbage of the field, and then to lie down in indolent repose: but we are sent to dig the soil and plough the sea; to do the business of cities and the work of manufactories. The world is the great and appointed school of industry. In an artificial state of society, mankind is divided into the idle and the laboring cla.s.ses; but such was not the design of Providence.
Labor is man's great function, his peculiar distinction and his privilege. From being an animal, that eats and drinks and sleeps only, to become a worker, and with the hand of ingenuity to pour his own thoughts into the moulds of Nature, fas.h.i.+oning them into forms of grace and fabrics of convenience, and converting them to purposes of improvement and happiness, is the greatest possible step in privilege.
The Earth and the Atmosphere are man's laboratory. With spade and plough, with mining-shafts and furnaces and forges, with fire and steam; midst the noise and whirl of swift and bright machinery, and abroad in the silent fields, man was made to be ever working, ever experimenting.
And while he and all his dwellings of care and toil are borne onward with the circling skies, and the splendors of Heaven are around him, and their infinite depths image and invite his thought, still in all the worlds of philosophy, in the universe of intellect, man must be a worker. He is nothing, he can be nothing, can achieve nothing, fulfill nothing, without working. Without it, he can gain neither lofty improvement nor tolerable happiness. The idle must hunt down the hours as their prey. To them Time is an enemy, clothed with armor; and they must kill him, or themselves die. It never yet did answer, and it never will answer, for any man to do nothing, to be exempt from all care and effort, to lounge, to walk, to ride, and to feast alone. No man can live in that way. G.o.d made a law against it: which no human power can annul, no human ingenuity evade.