"Our craft, as a viable organization, must take a lesson from the open and active service organization accomplishments".
When I read this statement I thought of the men who prayed: :Lord protect me from my friends, I an take care of my enemies". There is only one thing in the statement which is true! Our craft is a living thing. Those members who have a deeper understanding of it would like to keep it that way! How long must the craft continue to suffer from the attacks of well meaning but Masonically ignorant members?
Service organizations have found a place in society. They do a great deal of good and they deserve a great deal of credit, but Freemasonry is not a service club. A study of the earliest documents of the evolution from operative to speculative, of the principles which were carried over, of the development of new principles, of the growth of ritual and ceremonial and the attachment of new meaning to old ceremonies - in all of these there is nothing to indicate that Freemasonry was ever intended to be a service club.
It was W. L. Wilmshurst who said: "If they (Freemasons) do not spiritualize it (the order), they will increasingly materialize it". The words in brackets are mine. Those members who wish to turn the craft into a service club would materialize it and eventually destroy it.
Some members regard Masosnry as an allegory of physical birth, life and death, but every Fellowcraft should know that it is the internal and not the external qualifications of a man which Masonry regards. This is why the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania's Committee on Masonic Culture in an article published in Quatuor Coronati, 1965, says "It is the hidden esoteric symbolism that the primary purpose of the ceremonies of the craft is revealed". This is why the birth, life and death view aplies to spiritual as well as to physical life. Some members regard Masonry's aim to be the building of character. In this regard the above article states that in Masonry "there is stressed the realization of a higher ratio, a greater proportion on the divine in the character of man as contrasted with his originl natural qualities and instrincts" . . . and again, "the search for that which is lost 'is the symbolic effort to find the abstract truth, that is, the Divinity in ourselves and others'; the Masonic light shineth for those who have eyes to see, and, while some of its rays may fall upon things material the light is not to be found in materialism."
By T. M. Spencer, Grand Secretary; G.R.S.; Published
in THE TRACING BOARD, G.R.S.; September, 1969.
Submitted by D. R. Murray
King Solomon Lodge, No. 58, GRS
Victoria Lodge, No. 13, GRA
|
Web Site Created by