Part 11 (2/2)

[127] _Jewish Encyclopedia_, art ”Freemasonry” Also _Builder's Rites_, GW Speth

[128] In the _Book of Constitutions_, 1723, Dr Anderson dilates at length on the building of the Te of the name Abif, which, it will be remembered, was not found in the Authorized Version of the Bible; and then he suddenly breaks off with the words: ”_But leaving what _” It is incredible that he thus introduced aend unknown to them Had he done so, would it have met with such instant and universal acceptance by old Masons who stood for the ancient usages of the order?

[129] Letter to Gould ”Touching Masonic Symbolism”

[130] _Hermes and Plato_, Edouard Schure

[131] _History of the Lodge of Edinburgh_

[132] Steinbrenner, following Findel, speaks of the Third Degree as if it were a pure invention, quoting a passage from _Ahiman Rezon_, by Lawrence Deruliers were ”publicly accused of ree, _which they never denied_” (_History of Masonry_, chap vii) But inasmuch as they were not accused of it until they had been raves, their silence is hardly to be wondered at Dr Mackey styles Desaguliers ”the Father of Modern Speculative Masonry,” and attributes to him, more than to any other oneinstitution (_Encyclopedia of Freeuliers deserves to be honored by the order Dr JT Desaguliers was a French Protestant clergy the revocation of the Edict of Nantes He was graduated fro Keill as lecturer in Experimental Philosophy He was especially learned in natural philosophy,lectured before the King on various occasions He was very popular in the Grand Lodge, and his power as an orator ree i been accused of inventing the degrees He was a loyal and able Mason, a student of the history and ritual of the order, and was elected as the third Grand Master of Masons in England Like Anderson, his later life is said to have been beclouded by poverty and sorrow, though some of the facts are in dispute (Gould's _History of Masonry_, vol iii)

UNIVERSAL MASONRY

/ _These signs and tokens are of no se, and act as a passport to the attention and support of the initiated in all parts of the world They cannot be lost so long as memory retains its power Let the possessor of them be expatriated, shi+p-wrecked, or iot in the world; still these credentials remain and are available for use as circureat effects which they have produced are established by the most incontestable facts of history They have stayed the uplifted hand of the destroyer; they have softened the asperities of the tyrant; they have ated the horrors of captivity; they have subdued the rancor of malevolence; and broken down the barriers of political animosity and sectarian alienation_

_On the field of battle, in the solitude of the uncultivated forests, or in the busy haunts of the crowded city, they have ions, and the most diversified conditions, rush to the aid of each other, and feel a social joy and satisfaction that they have been able to afford relief to a brother Mason_

--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN /

CHAPTER V

_Universal Masonry_

I

Henceforth the Masons of England were no longer a society of handicraftsmen, but an association of men of all orders and every vocation, as also of alether on the broad basis of hunized no standard of human worth other than morality, kindliness, and love of truth They retained the sye, its legends, its ritual, and its oral tradition No longer did they build churches, but the spiritual teles of blocks of stone, but for evening the inequalities of human character, nor the Co-board, but to draw a Circle of goodwill around all eneration of e at once, and another succeed, like silkworms and butterflies No more did this metamorphosis of Masonry, so to name it, take place suddenly or radically, as it has become the fashi+on to think It was a slow process, and like every such period the Epoch of Transition was attended by many problees, as we have noted, would never agree to admit Accepted Masons, so jealous were they of the ancient lande, albeit a revival of the old asse toward undue centralization; and not without cause Froiven ranted to the President of an ancient asse Other influences added to the confusion, and at the sa the order into a more coherent unity for its wider service to humanity

There are hints to the effect that the new Masonry, if so it ress in the public favor at first, owing to the conditions just stated; and this despite the remark of Anderson in June, 1719: ”Now several old Brothers that had neglected the Craft, visited the Lodges; soes were constituted” Stuckely, the antiquarian, tells us in his _Diary_ under date of January, 1721--at which time he was initiated--that he was the first person made a Mason in London for years, and that it was not easy to find h to perform the ceremony Incidentally, he confides to us that he entered the order in search of the long hidden secrets of ”the Ancient Mysteries” No doubt he exaggerated in the h it is possible that initiations were co recruited, for the most part, by the adhesion of old Masons, both Operative and Speculative; and a e of the ritual

But that there was any real difficulty in gathering together seven Masons in London is, on the face of it, absurd Immediately thereafter, Stuckely records, Masonry ”took a run, and ran itself out of breath through the folly of its members,” but he does not tell us what the folly was The ”run” referred to was alu of the Grand Mastershi+p, which gave the order a prestige it had never had before; and it was also in the same year, 1721, that the old Constitutions of the Craft were revised

Twelve Lodges attended the June quarterly coe in 1721, sixteen in Septerown to thirty All these Lodges, be it noted, were in London, a fact araph of the _Book of Constitutions_, issued in that year So far the Grand Lodge had not extended its jurisdiction beyond London and Westminster, but the very next year, 1724, there were already nine Lodges in the provinces acknowledging its obedience, the first being the Lodge at the Queen's Head, City of Bath Within a few years Masonry extended its labors abroad, both on British and on foreign soil The first Lodge on foreign soil was founded by the Duke of Wharton at Madrid, in 1728, and regularized the following year, by which tial, and also at Gibraltar It was not long before Lodges arose in lish Masons or by es, when sufficiently nue at York, that ancient Mecca of Masonry, had called itself a Grand Lodge as early as 1725 The Grand Lodge of Ireland was created in 1729, those of Scotland[134] and France in 1736; a Lodge at Hah it was not patented until 1740; the Unity Lodge at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1742, another at Vienna the sae of the Three World-spheres at Berlin in 1744; and so on, until the order made its advent in Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Portugal

Following the footsteps of Masonry fro its early history, owing to the secrecy in which it enwrapped its movements For example, in 1680 there caland, who before the close of the century removed to Philadelphia, where, in 1703, he was Collector of the Port In a letter written by his in festivity with e of Masonry in America, unless we accept as authentic a curious document in the early history of Rhode Island, as follows: ”This ye [day and month obliterated] 1656, Wee ave Abrarees of Maconrie”[137] On June 5, 1730, the first authority for the asse of Free-masons in America was issued by the Duke of Norfolk, to Daniel coxe, of New Jersey, appointing him Provincial Grand Master of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and three years later Henry Price, of Boston, was appointed to the saland But Masons had evidently been co to the New World for years, for the two cases just cited date back of the Grand Lodge of 1717

How soon coxe acted on the authority given him is not certain, but the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, published by Benjamin Franklin, contains many references to Masonic affairs as early as July, 1730 Just when Franklin himself became interested in Masonry is not of record--he was initiated in 1730-31[138]--but he was a leader, at that day, of everything that would advance his adopted city; and the ”Junto,” formed in 1725, often inaccurately called the Leathern-Apron Club, owed its origin to him In a Masonic item in the _Gazette_ of Decees of Free-anization of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, of which he was appointed a Warden, at the Sun Tavern, in Water Street Two years later Franklin was elected Grand Master, and the same year published an edition of the _Book of Constitutions_--the first Masonic book issued in America Thus Masonry made an early advent into the neorld, in which it has labored so nobly, helping to lay the foundations and building its own basic principles into the organic law of the greatest of all republics

II