Part 10 (2/2)

Sayer, _Grand Master_, coes to meet the _Grand_ Officers every _Quarter_ in _Communication_, at the Place that he should appoint in the Summons sent by the _Tyler_

So reads the only record that has coland Preston and others have had no other authority than this passage for their descriptions of the scene, albeit when Preston wrote, such facts as he addedWho were present, beyond the three officers named, has so far eluded all research, and the only variation in the accounts is found in a rare old book called _Multa Paucis_, which asserts that six Lodges, not four, were represented Looking at this record in the light of e know of the Masonry of that period, a nu a revolution, the organization of the Grand Lodge was a revival of the old quarterly and annual assembly, born, doubtless, of a felt need of community of action for the welfare of the Craft There was no idea of innovation, but, as Anderson states in a note, ”it should e_,”

tradition having by this time become authoritative in such iven in the observance of St

John's Day[117] as a feast, in the de by a show of hands, in its deference to the oldest Master Mason, its use of badges of office,[118] its ceree duly tyled

Second, it is clear that, instead of being a deliberately planned effort to organize Masonry in general, the Grand Lodge was intended at first to affect only London and West to weld a link of closer fellowshi+p and cooperation between the Lodges

While we do not know the na spirits--unless weis clearer than that the initiative came from the heart of the order itself, and was in no sense ireat was the necessity for it that, when once started, link after link was added until it ”put a girdle around the earth”

Third, of the four Lodges[120] known to have taken part, only one--thatat the Rummer and Grape Tavern--had a majority of Accepted Masons in its es, or largely so Obviously, then, the movement was predominantly a movement of Operative Masons--or of men who had been Operative Masons--and not, as has been so often in of men who simply made use of the remnants of operative Masonry the better to exploit some hidden philosophy Yet it is worthy of note that the leading men of the craft in those early years were, nearly all of thee

Besides Dr Anderson, the historian, both George Payne and Dr

Desaguliers, the second and third Grand Masters, were of that Lodge

In 1721 the Duke of Montagu was elected to the chair, and thereafter members of the nobility sat in the East until it became the custoland[121]

Fourth, why did Masonry alone of all trades and professions live after its as done, preserving not only its identity of organization, but its old e thehteousness? The cathedrals had long been finished or left incomplete; the spirit of Gothic architecture was dead and the style treated alone, his place having been taken by the architect who, like Wren and Inigo Jones, was no longer a child of the Lodges as in the old days, but a n travel Why did not Free with the Guilds, or else revert to some kind of trades-union? Surely here is the best possible proof that it had never been si churches, but a reat symbols and a teacher of truths that never die So and only so may anyone ever hope to explain the story of Masonry, and those who do not see this fact have no clue to its history, enius

Of course these pages cannot recite in detail the history and growth of the Grand Lodge, but a few of the more salient events es_, or Gothic Constitutions, began to be collected and collated, a nu already been burned by scrupulous Masons to prevent their falling into strange hands In 1721, Grand Master Montagu found fault with the _Old Charges_ as being inadequate, and ordered Dr Anderson toa better set of regulations for the rule of the Lodges Anderson obeyed--he seeed in such a work already, and ested the idea to the Grand Master--and a committee of fourteen ”learned brethren” was appointed to exaested a few amendments, and the book was ordered published by the Grand Master, appearing in the latter part of 1723 This first issue, however, did not contain the account of the organization of the Grand Lodge, which does not seem to have been added until the edition of 1738 How much Past Grand Master Payne had to do with this work is not certain, but the chief credit is due to Dr Anderson, who deserves the perpetual gratitude of the order--the more so if he it rote the article, already quoted, setting forth the religious attitude of the order That article, by whoreat documents of mankind, and it would be an added joy to know that it was penned by a minister[122] The _Book of Constitutions_, which is still the groundwork of Masonry, has been printed in many editions, and is accessible to every one

Another event in the story of the Grand Lodge, never to be forgotten, was a plan started in 1724 of raising funds of General Charity for distressed Masons Proposed by the Earl of Dalkeith, it at once met with enthusiastic support, and it is a curious coincidence that one of the first to petition for relief was Anthony Sayer, first Grand Master The minutes do not state whether he was relieved at that time, but we know that suain in 1741 This Board of Benevolence, as it ca unanireed in 1733 that all such business as could not be conveniently despatched by the Quarterly Communication should be referred to it Also, that all Masters of Regular Lodges, together with all present, former, and future Grand Officers should be members of the Board Later this Board was still further empowered to hear coe Let it also be noted that in actual practice the Board of Charity gave free play to one of thethe needy and unfortunate, whether within the order or without

III

Once more we come to a much debated question, about which not a little has been written, and in of the Third Degree Here again students have gone hither and yon hunting in every cranny for the ree, and it would seem that their failure to find it would by this time have turned them back to the only place where they may ever hope to discover it--in Masonry itself But no; they are bound to bring mystics, occultists, alcheerichte_ of Ger of Masonry sola to give due credit to Cabalists and Rosicrucians, the present writer rejects all such theories on the ground that there is no reason for thinking that they helped to make Masonry, _much less any fact to prove it_

Hear now a review of the facts in the case No one denies that the Temple of Soloanization of the Grand Lodge, and long before--as in the Bacon rohton, Selden, Lightfoot, Walton, Lee, Prideaux, and other English writers were deeply interested in the Hebrew Teestion as in its forht to London by Judah Ten of Charles II[125] It wasa new topic of study and discussion, we h the Middle Ages Nor was it peculiar to the Cabalists, at least not to such a degree that they ery and syued that Masonry explains the interest in the Teusson reher authority than the historian of architecture: ”There is perhaps no building of the ancient world which has excited so much attention since the time of its destruction, as the Temple of Solomon built in Jerusalehout the Middle Ages it influenced to a considerable degree the forms of Christian churches, and its peculiarities were the ords and rallying points of associations of builders_”[126] Clearly, the notion that interest in the Te was i novel, falls flat

But we are told that there is no hint of the Hiraedy associated with the building of the Teedy! Why, both were al that ”_all the workmen were killed that they should not build another Te translated to heaven like Enoch_”[127] The Talend Where would one expect the legends of the Temple to be kept alive and be ious order of builders like the Masons? Is it surprising that we find so few references in later literature to as thus held as a sacred secret? As we have seen, the legend of Hiram was kept as a profound secret until 1841 by the French Coe, who almost certainly learned it from the Free-masons Naturally it was never made a matter of record,[128] but was transmitted by oral tradition within the order; and it was also natural, if not inevitable, that the legend, of the master-artist of the Te Masons ere temple-builders How else explain the veiled allusions to the naes_ as read to Entered Apprentices, if it was not a secret reserved for a higher rank of Mason? Why any disguise at all if it had no hidden ree was purely Masonic, and we need not go outside the traditions of the order to account for it

Not content to trace the evolution of Masonry, even so able a ence who belonged to one of the four old lodges in 1717 ”is to be ascribed the authorshi+p of the Third Degree, and the introduction of Hermetic and other syrees for the purpose of co their doctrines, veiled by their syave to others trite racious of them to vouchsafe even trite explanations, but why frarees to conceal what they wished to hide? This is the sa alien iestion, novel indeed, that Masonry was organized to hide the truth, rather than to teach it But did Masonry have to go outside its own history and tradition to learn Hermetic truths and symbols? Who was Herreat figure in the Egyptian Mysteries, and was called the Father of Wisdoments of his lore as have floated down to us, impaired, it may be, but always vivid, we discover that his wisdoht in visions and rhapsodies, and using numbers as symbols Was such wisdom new to Masonry? Had not Hermes himself been a hero of the order froes_, in which he has a place of honor alongside Euclid and Pythagoras? Wherefore go elsewhere than to Masonry itself to trace the _pure_ streaes? Certainly the e were adepts, but they were _Masonic adepts seeking to bring the buried te its beauty_, not cultistsuse of it to exploit a private scheence” to whoree of Masonry? Tradition has fixed upon Desaguliers as the ritualist of the Grand Lodge, and Lyon speaks of him as ”the pioneer and co-fabricator of syeration, albeit Desaguliers orthy of high eulogy, as were Anderson and Payne, who are said to have been his collaborators[132] But the fact is that the Third Degree was not reat cathedrals, no one of which can be ascribed to a single artist, but to an order ofin unity of enterprise and aspiration The process by which the old ritual, described in the _Sloane MS_, was divided and developed into three degrees between 1717 and 1730 was so gradual, so imperceptible, that no exact date can be set; still less can it be attributed to any one or two men Froe at the Queen's Head in Hollis Street was using three distinct degrees in 1724 As early as 1727 we coht for the Master's Degree, the dra evidently becoreeof the endless quarrels of sects, turned for relief to the Ancient Mysteries as handed down in their traditions--the old, high, heroic faith in God, and in the soul ofupon this earth If, as Aristotle said, it be theus subdued with a sense of pity and hope and fortified against ill fortune, it is permitted us to add that in sirasp of the realities of the life of man, its portrayal of the stupidity of evil and the splendor of virtue, its revelation of that in our hu, even to life itself, rather than defarity, and in its prophecy of the victory of light over shadow, there is not another draree of Masonry Edwin Booth, a loyal Mason, and no edy, left these words:

/[4,66]

In all my research and study, in all my close analysis of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, in my earnest detere, I have never, and nowhere, end of Hiram It is substance without shadow--the manifest destiny of life which requires no picture and scarcely a word toimpression upon all who can understand To be a Worshi+pful Master, and to throhole soul into that work, with the candidate for reater personal distinction than to receive the plaudits of people in the theaters of the world