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On the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, 2011

2012-01-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

On the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, 2011

John M. Klaus

Specialis Procer Lodge No. 678, A. F. & A. M.

December 30, 2011

The Feast of the Holy Saint John the Evangelist

I’m regularly asked to address various Masonic functions. I’m not really sure why. I’m by no means a champion rhetorician; I’m not a silver-tongued orator; and Lord knows I’m no feast for the eyes!

Maybe I’m just not quite so grouchy or tongue-tied as some more distinguished dignitaries. I also work really cheap.

I always consider these invitations a privilege, and spend significant time preparing my remarks, though it doesn’t show much.

There are three inevitable responses from those I am called upon to cheer up, harass, or embarrass:

Some, perhaps 45%, have no intention whatsoever of listening to anything I—or anyone else—might have to say. These stalwarts would prefer to have a nice belt of a serious adult beverage and then to repair to the rear of the room for a nap. They skulk off in that general direction when it appears the delivery of my oral truculence is imminent.

Others, maybe 35%, have heard that I occasionally stir up a ruckus, and they come forearmed to the fray. They surreptitiously smuggle suspect sacks into the chamber. I saw them here this very evening. These people tend to migrate to the center of the facilities, so as to provide themselves with more pitching space and better aim.

The remaining 20% are willing to give me a chance, and they gravitate toward the front. They can, however, be fickle in their loyalty, and most are willing and more than able to sell out to one of the other factions with only slight provocation.

To accommodate those of a more soporific inclination, I have rhetorically requested that our genial host, Bro. Harshbarger, provide us with a supply of comfortable resting places and pillows. With his customary grace, generosity, and efficiency, he has provided a goodly supply of rhetorical pillows, and asked that his associates vacuum and fluff up the carpet at the other end of the room. I urge those who feel compelled to snore to do so in three- to five-part harmony, so as to provide a suitable background score for the impending disquisition.

I would request that members of the more belligerent caucus in the middle ground limit their physical missiles to those of a softer variety, so as to preserve the safety of other congregants. Thus, while over-ripe tomatoes and cabbages are appropriate ammunition for your catapults, coconuts and whole watermelons probably are not.

Finally, I urge the small flock of potential vacillators down in front to hang in there! Display the stoicism of those resident in a northern clime in midwinter! Oh, ye strong of conviction and character! Great will your rewards in heaven be!

Apparently it’s my job to mumble gently and politely and to make sure I don’t interrupt your devotions completely.

I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise not to disturb the solemnities of my ponderous discourse with unpredictable raucous outbursts, I’ll promise in return not to make my multifarious points with unprovoked fortissimo flourishes of rhetoric or pounding on the pulpit. If we can agree to those terms, and forego undue fisticuffs at the end of my peroration, most will be home by the time Marvin McNutt makes his first pass reception, and the rest of us can listen on WHO or WMT.

Let’s get to it. What the Sam Hill are we doing here?

Oh, sure. I know. Freemasons are supposed to whoop it up on the feast days of John the Baptist on June 24 and John the Evangelist on December 27. So we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, or approximately so.

But what’s up with those two Saints named John? What do they have to do with the price of milk at the Hy-Vee? And how’d those boys get to be Masonic saints in the first place?

Well, maybe we’ll figure some of that out before we strike the set and head for the barn.

For now, though, don’t worry yourself about our old buddy John the Evangelist. He and his pal John the Baptist are hanging out together in the 33° Room and playing cribbage. Either one of them would give Al Jensen or Dean Johnson a run for his money. Baptist brought a lovely hors d’oeuvres platter of local honeys and wild locusts, while Evangelist brought a tray of brine-cured olives, a hunk of home-made goat cheese, and a couple of amphoras of sour wine. We’d probably claim it was “an amusing and refreshingly regional little dry white with astonishing terroir.” One of them brought along some matzos and some chametz. Baptist’s shoveling it in pretty well and scratching himself, while Evangelist’s shining up his halo with his ink-stained robe. Don’t worry. We’ll get back to him directly, after Baptist joins the heavy-breathing contingent in the rear of the hall. I’d suggest you folks back there give him a wide berth. I think there are fleas in that camel-skin outfit of his.

Let me get to the text of my sermon.

I have chosen for this refined occasion two poems I consider to be among the greatest expressions in American English during the twentieth century. The two poets were born less than ten years apart, and died just months apart. Both were among the most influential writers of their time. The poems were written within three years of each other, in the early 1920s. Their styles, however, could not be more different from each other.

I won’t attempt to explain either poem. That’s your job. Great poetry is, I think, like Freemasonry: each who encounters it must discover its meaning individually; the meaning differs for each serious student, and the meaning does not appear without considerable contemplation.

I urge you to study these poems at your leisure, and to ferret out their specific meanings for yourself. So firmly do I believe in the value of these two brief poems that I have provided you with a lavish seasonal gift. Please don’t open it yet, but inside the envelope I’ve given you is a souvenir copy of the two poems, and a flash drive—formatted for Mac and PC both—with historic recordings of the two poets reading their own works.

Most poetry, I submit, should be read aloud and listened to. So I’d like to read these two poems to you.

The Red Wheelbarrow (1923)

William Carlos Williams

(1883-1963)

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.[1]

The Road Less Traveled (1920)

Robert Frost

(1874-1963)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.[2]

I told you I wasn’t going to tell you what these poems are about, and I lied. But just a little.

Both poems are concerned with history.

Williams paints a shatteringly vivid and visual image in words—an image almost surgical in its precision, as befits his profession as a physician—and tells us at the outset, “so much depends upon [what is to come].” He doesn’t give us a clue about what is to come.

Frost describes an incident in the past, and then tells us, “…that has made all the difference.” He consciously does not tell us what the difference is.

Part of what I want to address is history in general and Masonic history in particular.

Now, you need to remember that history is a sneaky critter. Just when you think it’s nowhere around, it’ll sneak up on you from where you’re not looking and bite you.

History is not linear. It runs around in circles screaming like a banshee for a while, and then hides under the couch for a while. Then, when you think it’s under the couch to stay, it pops its pointy head up ’way over yonder and yells, “Booga, booga!”

We tend to think history is linear, because we think of history and time as the same thing, or at least as closely related. To be sure, all history occurs in time—everything occurs in time. But history is almost never governed by time. That linear dictator, time, occasionally describes, but never contains history.

History is not isolated, either, and it usually needs a human around somewhere to figure it out. History, almost by definition, needs for something to happen, and then for someone to grapple with the meaning of what happened.

History is very much a causal factor of the human experience, and the human experience is equally a causal factor of history. As Shakespeare tells us in The Tempest, “what’s past is prologue.” What happened in the past got us here. Moreover, with the exception of geological history and other sorts of natural history, humans affect much of what happens in this world. What we do today can have profound effect on what happens (or doesn’t happen) tomorrow.

In addition, history requires facts. However, that’s been important only for the past 175 years or so, with a few remarkable exceptions before that time. That’s part of the problem.

See why history is so sneaky?

Let me give me an example from another life I once led.

In the fifteenth century, during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, there were two especially influential composers of music, one English and one French.

The Englishman, John Dunstable, probably spent most of his career in the service of the family of John of Lancaster, the first Duke of Bedford (that’s Bedford, England, not Bedford, Iowa). John of Lancaster was the fourth son of King Henry IV and younger brother of Henry V. More important, he was Regent of France from 1423 to 1429, and then Governor of Normandy until his death in 1435.

According to tax records of 1436, Dunstable owned property in Normandy, and in Cambridgeshire, Essex, and London.

So here’s a guy, by leaps and bounds the most influential English musician of his age, who moved in high circles in England, and not only spent time in France, but also owned property there.

Enter now the Frenchman, one Guillaume Dufay, a younger contemporary of Dunstable. Dufay was for years the foremost composer in the employ of the Dukes of Burgundy, the not-always-so-militarily-loyal cousins of the French Kings. Dufay had studied in Cambrai, in the far north of France, as a youth. He returned to serve in the cathedral there during the 1440s. And get this!—at that very time, the Duchy of Burgundy exercised a powerful hegemony over the cathedral city. One of the earliest documents from Dufay’s adult time in Cambrai dates from December 27, 1440, when he received a delivery of 36 lots of wine for the feast of St. John the Evangelist. I’ll bet he was getting ready for his Lodge’s celebration of the feast!

Dufay was, by far, the most influential European composer of his time, and his middle and later styles show strong influence of contemporaneous English music. So marked was this English influence on Dufay and his contemporaries that the poet Martin de Franc, in his immense poem—as in 24,000 verses immense—Le Champion des Dames, refers to the style as the “contenance Angloise,” or “English sound.” And guess to whom that big poem was dedicated? Why, it was none other than the old rascal Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. And it dates from the 1440s, just when Dufay was employed by Philip and living in Cambrai.

Got that? A Frenchman who lived near English continental territory and worked for a not-necessarily-patriotic French Duke is influenced by the style made famous by an Englishman who, about the same time, lived not far away in Northern France, actually owned property there, and worked for members of the English royal family who governed in France.

So here’s your essay question: Did Dunstable and Dufay ever get together, hoist a flagon or three, and have a good conversation?

You know, and I know, and even Jerry Levay, Ronnie Seale, Billy Koon, and Ed Fowler know that the answer is clearly, “Well, of course they got together!”

But here’s the feather in those scrambled eggs:

I have absolutely ZERO documentary evidence of that barn dance between Dunstable and Dufay—and nobody else has any either. There’s nothing. Zip. Nada.

And THAT, my brothers and friends, moves that delightful and convivial meeting between Dunstable and Dufay into absolute conjecture, a legend, a fairy tale, a story, and—given what we know at present—a complete historical fraud.

There’s the difference between history and legend. Facts are pesky things indeed.

There’s one more aspect of history I need to mention.

For some very human reason, history seems to be important to us individually. I don’t mean political or even regional history here, but rather personal and family history.

We seem to need to define for ourselves who we are in relation to the past, present, and future. The study we call genealogy is a part of this need. That’s part of the syndrome that guides some folks to insist, as their single claim to fame, that they are descended from, say, Millard Fillmore’s maternal grandfather.

So, to recapitulate, history is important, it is comprised of facts and not legends, and it is important at cosmic, international, national, regional, local, and personal levels.

Let’s get back on-task here.

Freemasonry has a lot of history, and Freemasonry has a lot of legends.

The problem is we don’t distinguish between the two very well. A lot—even most—of what too many Masons call “Masonic history” is nothing of the sort. It’s legend, and some of it is pretty silly legend.

[Yup. That rips it, doesn’t it? HEY! You in the middle back there! I SEE you sneaking your hand around that rotten cantaloupe! It’s not time to throw it yet, so put it down!]

Let me give you some examples of legends:

1. Hiram Abiff was some sort of Egyptian aristocrat and, moreover, a couple of Brits identified his mummy with more than a little enthusiasm.

UTTER, UNADULTERATED BALDERDASH! Those two can jump to a sketchy conclusion faster than a duck can hop on a June-bug.

2. There were three Grand Masters in an early Grand Lodge. Two were kings and one a commoner. Two were named Hiram.

Nope.

3. Adam, Noah, King Solomon, Pythagoras, Euclid, the Essenes, the Comacines, the Roman Mystery Schools, Jesus Christ and His Apostles, Muhammad, Charlemagne, King Athelstan, King Edward I, the Knights Templar, many Holy Roman Emperors, Santa Claus, the Easter Rabbit, the Tooth Fairy, and almost every other relatively benevolent or kindly famous man of the past were all Freemasons, and lots of them were Grand Masters!

Calm down there, now. Help is on the way.

4. Masons’ Guilds in Medieval Europe and England were comprised of at least some Freemasons.

Show me the facts.

5. Let’s try this: Certainly the Halliwell Manuscript (or Regius Poem), with its intimate descriptions of the duties of apprentices and masters, is proof-positive that Freemasonry was a thriving enterprise in the West of England sometime around 1400.

The only problem is that the manuscript says absolutely nothing about Freemasonry. It is what it is: an eloquent and beautiful description of a lodge of OPERATIVE Masons at the height of the Guild movement.

6. Surely you’ll admit that the Gothic Constitutions—the Cooke manuscript or the Schaw Statutes, for example—are among the early documents of Freemasonry.

No, I won’t. There’s no question that the Gothic Constitutions exerted a profound influence on Freemasonry, once Freemasonry existed as Freemasonry—but they pre-date Freemasonry.

In your little packet I’ve enclosed a most entertaining essay on this very topic by our very own JerryMarsengill. I urge you to read it at your leisure.[3]

So.

That’s it, boys! I’m personally not buying a LICK of that stuff as anything other than legend—as it describes the direct history of Freemasonry—but I also think legends, like symbols, have a lot to teach us.

[YOU, SIR! UNHAND THAT CANTALOUPE!]

Well, we could play this little game for a long time. So I’ll cut to the chase.

Here’s what I think I know about early Masonic history:

1. The structure of modern Freemasonry seems to be modeled in rudimentary form on the structure of some Lodges of Operative Masons in London and—probably—Scotland.

2. There is very little documentation of masons’ lodges—or of most other guilds, for that matter—during the time prior to about 1400.

3. Information we have between about 1400 and about 1600 is sparse, and applies to operative masonry rather than to Freemasonry.

4. The religious schism between Rome and England, and the English Civil War had, eventually, a profound influence on Freemasonry.

5. A few records, and more from Scotland than from England, between about 1600 and about 1700 show a very few non-operative members admitted to operative lodges of masons. There is a scant handful of such men, though the non-operative men admitted as masons were very interesting and influential men indeed.

6. As the seventeenth century matured and then waned, several non-operative masons appear to have had some association with the brand-new Royal Society (founded in 1660), even today one of the most eminent scientific groups in the world.

7. There seems to have been a growth in numbers of non-operative masons between 1700 and the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. By 1716 there were apparently sufficient numbers of Freemasons in and around London to make the new Grand Lodge of Freemasons viable.

Now let’s return briefly to history as a concept. No human action occurs in a vacuum. Whether of historical significance or not, whatever a person does is governed at the very least by who that person is.

The early eighteenth century, into which modern Freemasonry was born, was one of the most remarkable periods of human endeavor in all history, and London was one of the cultural epicenters.

I’ve already mentioned the Royal Society, one of the first organizations ever to use regularly what we call “the scientific method,” sometimes called the “Newtonian Method,” in honor of Sir Isaac Newton, who left this earth in 1727. Some would claim Newton as an early Freemason, but the documentation is lacking. He was, however, well-acquainted with early Freemasons, many of whom were members of the Royal Society, where he presided from 1702 until his death in 1727.

So let’s allow that the early eighteenth century was a time of great scientific investigation and discovery, and that the use of what we call “the scientific method” was a part of scientific investigation of the period.

In the fields of letters and the fine arts, English accomplishments of the period certainly rival those of English science.

Since music is allegedly my field of expertise, let me use it as a brief example.

Who are the major composers in the first half of the eighteenth century?

Well, there are four towering geniuses, and three of them were known throughout Europe and the British Isles at the time. They were the Italian priest Antonio Vivaldi; the head of the French Academy of Music, Jean-Phillipe Rameau; and the German who was educated in Italy and spent most of his career in England, George Frederick Handel (to use the English version of his name). Ironically, the one least known in his day was perhaps the greatest of the lot, Johann Sebastian Bach.

There were hundreds of other more-than-competent composers, some of whose names are well-known today, and others who are known only to specialists.

Perhaps no period in history, save our own, was so suffused with music. There’s one significant difference between then and now: today we often depend on others to make music for us. In the eighteenth century, anyone with any pretensions to couth and gentility could play several instruments to a level we would see today as semi-professional, and could sing with more than a little skill as well. So pervasive was music in England at the time that coffee houses, barber shops, and other places where people gathered had sets of musical instruments and various volumes of choral music for the use of their patrons. It was a given that everyone could read music fluently.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were also politically significant for Great Britain. Here things get a bit more complex.

Let’s go back to King Henry VIII, who was crowned in 1509 and reigned until his death in 1547. Sure, we all know he had six wives. But that’s not the point. I’d like to note five significant aspects Henry’s reign:

1. Henry was the first English king to have what we would call today a “real liberal arts education.”

2. Henry was an “absolute monarch,” but that notion began its decline during the sixteenth century, when Henry was king.

3. Henry was perhaps the most brilliant international and domestic politician of his age.

4. Henry’s serial marriages were a desperate attempt to produce a male heir.

5. Henry’s belief that his power as a sovereign monarch trumped the power of the Roman church, and Martin Luther’s contemporaneous attempts to reform the Roman church, led to the Continental and British Protestant Reformations.

Let’s move next to 1603, the year of the Great Plague, and the year Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VIII’s daughter, died. Elizabeth had been 26 when she succeeded to the throne, and she reigned for 46 years.

Elizabeth, like her father, was a strong and capable ruler, but her death brought in its train significant upheavals. For most of the rest of the century, questions of religion and royal succession of one sort or another rocked the British Isles. It was not until the Act of Settlement of 1701, that forbade a Roman Catholic ruler in Great Britain, and the eventual accession of George I in 1714, that these issues were largely put to rest.

This is neither the time nor the place to rehearse the complexities of these political upheavals, including the three parts of the English Civil War. Suffice it to say that, by very early in the eighteenth century in England, the divine right of monarchs had been called into question; a monarch’s right to rule without the assent of a parliament had been overthrown; the Roman church had been replaced by the Anglican church as the official state religion in England; and the stranglehold of a single religion on the British people had been loosened, as other forms of Protestantism gained strength and acceptance. Eventually, and with no small suspicion, Roman Catholicism could again be practiced openly. When George I, the first of the Hanoverians, acceded to the British throne in 1714, controversies about the British crown were solved in a dynasty that continues to this day.

Another essential factor in this political scenario is the death, on September 1, 1715, of wily old Louis XIV of France, who, despite his well-deserved flamboyant reputation, was nonetheless one of the ablest and most astute monarchs of his age. With the Sun King’s death, however, the French were more than willing to ally themselves with the English to protect the coasts of both countries from Spanish invasion—an alliance that proved very successful indeed.

Finally, the succession to the British monarchy and the calming of relations between England and France began a period of general stability in English government that has continued, with a few pronounced hiccoughs, to the present day.

Just who were the people of the early eighteenth century in England?

Most of the gentry could read Latin, Classical Greek, and Hebrew with fluency, and could speak at least four modern languages (including English, of course) with ease. The modern languages almost always included French, German, and Italian, and the more linguistically inquisitive could speak Spanish, Russian, Modern Greek, and other northern or central European languages as well. Generally these people—men and women alike—had traveled extensively on the continent as well as throughout Britain.

In addition, they were completely familiar with the Bible, Classical Latin and Greek literature and mythology, and the classic literary works of Europe and England.

In short, the gentry, at least, in eighteenth-century England, were remarkably well educated and culturally aware. This is NOT to say that everyone was in this serendipitous position. Poverty and appalling slums were as much a part of London life as were the benefits of excellent education, good family, and plenty of filthy lucre.

This heady philosophical, scientific, and cultural period is referred to today as “the Enlightenment.” Ring any bells?

There’s one more piece to add to this jigsaw puzzle. Beginning about 1700 in London and continuing informally throughout much of the century, to culminate more formally late in the century and into the nineteenth century, was a peculiar bent to form social clubs.

Harry L. Haywood and James E. Craig were among the twentieth-century pioneers of studying the history of Freemasonry systematically, and their History of Freemasonry, a volume that appeared in 1927, is a seminal work in many ways. While scholars of the past 90 years have disproved some notions in the book, they have also substantiated many others.

Haywood and Craig, in discussing the growth of social clubs in the eighteenth century note that these clubs were founded for just about any reason under the sun. They suggest that a man with a long nose, seeing another gentleman sporting a protuberant proboscis on the street, might approach him, and together they might seek out others of similar physiognomy for the purpose of establishing a Club of Long-Nosed Men. They would choose a local hostelry where they might meet, and then hold those meetings; the primary purpose would be to dine well, gossip long, and drink excessively. As other similarly-featured gentlemen learned of the existence of the club, they might apply to join it, and, once admitted, join in the pleasures of the board, scandal, and the bottle. Discussion at the meetings might well focus on current political and social occurrences. The club might be either conservatively or liberally positioned politically, depending on its membership—or it might be neither.^{^[4]}

In London, between 1700 and 1715, there appear to have been several lodges of masons whose membership included both operative and speculative masons. The number of such lodges is unclear. It does seem that the guild system in which many craft guilds had flourished for several centuries was on the skids, and, during the eighteenth century, all but a few guilds ceased to exist; those that continued tended to be guilds in name rather than in practice, and had little control over craftspeople who pursued the trades they represented.

The lodges of operative masons, with their inclusion of speculative members, however, were different. More and more, it appears, the speculative members began to outnumber the operatives.

How these lodges came to be is an open question. Facts are pesky things even in their absence, and between about 1650 and 1715, the documents about masons’ lodges are missing almost completely.

There appear, at least by tradition, to have been occasional meetings among two or several lodges.

These lodges of masons, as heirs of operative lodges, seem NOT to have existed primarily for the purposes of gluttony, scandal-mongering, and getting hammered. That’s very probably the reason that there is, in every Lodge of Freemasons, an officer whose duty it is to watch over members during refreshment, and see that they do not convert the purposes of refreshment into intemperance and excess. No, as descendants of lodges of operative masons, and with a number of operative masons still active in their membership, these “clubs” had another purpose from those espoused by many of the more ephemeral social clubs around them.

Into this rich stew was introduced, on June 24, 1717, the Grand Lodge of England. In fact, this apparently was a follow-up meeting from a less lavish meeting held sometime in 1716, when four London lodges met and decided they needed to meet together regularly. At that meeting they may have founded a “Grand Lodge pro tempore.”

As all here know, the June 1717 meeting was a big deal. In retrospect, it turns out to have been the founding of what finally would emerge as the United Grand Lodge of England, the organization from which all regular (as opposed to clandestine) Masonic Lodges are descended either directly or collaterally.

June 24, 1717 was a Monday. It was also the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Since about the middle of the eighteenth century Freemasons have made a big deal of celebrating June 24, and of calling it a celebration of the Feast of John the Baptist.

And here’s where my heresy really begins.

You see, I don’t think those brothers who met at the Goose and Gridiron near St. Paul’s Cathedral in London gave a hoot about whose Saint’s Day June 24 was. If it had mattered that much, they could have waited about ten days, and met on Wednesday, July 3, the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, the patron saint of architects.

I strongly suspect that our London brethren in 1717 sought nothing more than to put their fraternity on a stronger foundation. By establishing a central administration, they could increase communication among the original lodges and any that might become affiliated, and provide for more efficient management of fraternal affairs.

I strongly suspect that the farthest things from their minds at the moment were minutiae of ritual, precedent, symbolism, genealogy, and history. All of that, I suggest was RESULT, rather than CAUSE of the 1717 meeting.

[Now put that cantaloupe DOWN!]

But remember who members of those four Lodges were! Operative stonemasons, to be sure. But also Royal Society members. Philosophers, clergymen, scholars, jurists, linguists, members of the peerage. Before anything else, they were men of the English Enlightenment, a movement characterized by skepticism of dogmatic religion, and by using reason rather than superstition as a tool to reform society and advance knowledge. Many of them were men of almost astonishing breadth of intellectual curiosity and knowledge.

Moreover, and even more important, they were Englishmen of the Enlightenment. They were skeptical not only of the absolute power of a single religious confession in their lives. They were equally skeptical of the divine and absolute right of any ruler to have complete power over their secular lives.

Many things we take for granted today were revolutionary concepts for these early brethren. From their guild past they inherited the singular notion (for their day) of the equality of their members. In the days when the masons’ guild flourished, this would have been a given. However, as more and more non-operative masons joined the fraternity, members of the aristocracy sat side-by-side with members of the working class—as acknowledged equals.

In a society deeply steeped in hereditary titles, the notion that leaders could be elected from among the membership, and changed annually, was very nearly political heresy. Yet, threatening as prevailing political power found this tendency to be, it persisted, and triumphed later in the century in the American and French revolutions.

These revolutionary political ideas were, of course, not original to Freemasonry, nor were they particularly novel concepts. However, the rapid spread of Freemasonry between, say, 1717 and 1750, with its ideas of equality, tolerance, and elected leaders intact, made these revolutionary ideas much more threatening to entrenched powers, and led very quickly to a vigorous opposition to the order.

While early Grand Lodge Freemasonry inherited only a rudimentary system of ritual and a number of relatively disjointed legends from its past in English guilds and lodges, early Grand Lodge Freemasons acted quickly and decisively to consolidate ritual, symbols—and fraternal government. It may have been only days, and certainly was not longer than a few months, before some of these clever chaps began to realize what they had by the tail.

From their immediate predecessors, the operative masons’ lodges of seventeenth-century England, they inherited a code of morality and conduct, a sense of the importance of religion (though, in their skeptical Enlightenment manner, they would soon abandon the insistence that doctrinaire Christianity be a requirement), and a rudimentary catechism (or ritual) for an initiatory and an advancement ceremony.

Since there had been a few men admitted to operative lodges beginning as early as 1600, they also had some notion of requirements for membership, and of the use of the daily tools of masonry to represent symbolically important behavior traits.

Now, in the interest of complete honesty, I need to note that the records of the Grand Lodge of England (or rather, of London, as it was then known) begin only in 1723. Thus what happened between 1717 and 1723 is necessarily supported only by secondary reports. However, those reports agree so completely that we can, I believe, depend on them until more precise data are uncovered.

The organizing of the structure of the fraternity proceeded with astonishing speed. The first Grand Master of the new Grand Lodge was one Anthony Sayer. We don’t really know much about him. He seems to have been a nice guy, popular with everybody else, and may have been an operative mason in his day. We do know that he ran into financial difficulties later in his life, and that he received some fraternal aid to get through the rough patches.

The next two Grand Masters, however, were very different from Grand Master Sayer. Neither had ever been an operative mason, and both were very interested in the structure of the fraternity.

The second Grand Master was George Payne, who was elected to the Grand Oriental Chair in 1718. A man with deep roots in the upper middle class, he was related to a number of members of the lesser aristocracy of England, and was, when he became Grand Master, a rising star in the Department of the Exchequer, where he was to become Head Secretary for Taxes in 1743.

It is probable that, among other pressing items, Grand Master Payne turned his attention to matters of lodge structure, governance, and ritual—certainly these matters were to interest him throughout his life.

Grand Master Payne’s successor, as the third Grand Master, was one of the most important, if most neglected, figures in early Grand Lodge Freemasonry: John Theophilus Desaguliers.

Grand Master Desaguliers was one of the most remarkable men in England when he was elected Grand Master in 1719. He had completed his doctorate—as Doctor of Civil Law—in Natural Philosophy (what we would call “experimental science”) at Oxford the year before, and had been lecturing on science, a novel undertaking at the time, in London since about 1710. Indeed, members of the Royal Family, including George I and the future George II seem to have attended his lectures and public experiments. In 1714 Desaguliers was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, where Newton was already a close acquaintance. He soon became secretary of the Royal Society, and was responsible for its publications, including his own work.

In short, when he became Grand Master, Desaguliers was a famous man, and extremely popular among the most influential members of London society.

Did I mention that he was also an Anglican priest?

Grand Master Desaguliers appears to have been an avid collector and assembler of ancient Masonic manuscripts, and he most certainly had the intellectual abilities to examine, understand, and collate them.

As a very well-known, well-liked, and well-respected man of affairs in London, he also attracted a large number of aristocrats and men of influence to the Fraternity, and set the course for Freemasonry’s rapidly growing favorable reputation.

Grand Master Desaguliers, as a clergyman in the Church of England, instituted another Masonic innovation.

George E. Maine, at the time the Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of Washington (state) wrote in 1939,

[Desaguliers] brought to [Freemasonry] his experimental philosophy, and gave to it a touch of Newtonian Christianity, a belief in Newton’s God, now and for the first time, “The Great Artificer and Creator of the Universe.” The world had been openly venal and immoral. It had been attacking religion in self defense, and all the more easily because religion seemed but an ancient dogma. But here was a new idea in religion, one appealing to the intelligence instead of offering a creed, for it based upon analysis and reality. Here a contemplation of nature produced certain logical facts. It taught men to think.^{^[5]}

Grand Master Desaguliers was followed by Grand Master George Payne’s second term, in 1720.

In September 1721, a mere four years after the founding of the Grand Lodge, that body commissioned the Rev. Dr. James Anderson, a Scottish Presbyterian pastor long resident in London, to bring the history, ritual, rules, and customs of the order together in some sort of system. The result, of course, was Anderson’s Constitutions, still one of Freemasonry’s defining documents. Many scholars agree that Anderson depended on work by both Payne and Desaguliers in constructing his work. The Constitutions appeared in print in 1723, and again in a 1738 revision.

When the Grand Lodge was founded in 1717, it was for two purposes: to help to improve communication and government among the four original lodges and further lodges as they might be recognized, and to hold quarterly meetings—with associated feasts. Early on it was apparently recognized that June 24 was the feast day of St. John the Baptist. The feast day of St. John the Evangelist was almost exactly six months later, on December 27, and that became the December feast day.

Soon, however, and certainly by the time of Anderson’s Constitutions, more elaborate symbolism was assigned to these dates. June 24 and December 27 occur very close to the summer and winter solstices, and there have been solstice celebrations since the beginning of human life on this earth.

However, I can’t prove this. Right Worshipful Brother Phil Elam, who was Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of Missouri in 1999-2000, in writing about the two Saints John, notes,

No satisfactory explanation has yet been advanced to explain why operative Masons adopted these two particular Christian saints, when, for example, St. Thomas, the patron of architecture and building, was already in wide use.^{^[6]}

I’d add to that observation that St. Stephen is the patron saint of operative masons—and his Feast Day is December 26. If the founders of the Grand Lodge had wanted patron saints related to the craft, they could easily have chosen St. Thomas (architects) on July 3, and St. Stephen (stonemasons) on December 26. That argues to me that the meeting on the Feast of St. John the Baptist on June 24, 1717, was not scheduled on the saint’s feast day with malice aforethought. That’s just the way it happened.

Nonetheless, the characters of the two Saints John are almost antipodal opposites. St. John the Baptist, the firebrand vagabond preacher, who lived in the desert and often appeared at times when he was least welcome, is contrasted with John the Evangelist, introspective favorite of Jesus’s apostles, and allegedly author of the Gospel that bears his name. He almost certainly did NOT write the book of Revelation, by the way—though that book was still ascribed to him in the eighteenth century.

Imagine now the Masonic symbol of the point within a circle. We use the symbol primarily to represent a single Mason surrounded by everything around him, but circumscribed with the circle of a compass, thus keeping his passions within control. The symbol is, however, much older, and would have been recognized by any alchemist of the early eighteenth century—Newton, for example—as one of the symbols for the Philosopher’s Stone. An astronomer would have seen it as the symbol of a sun-centered universe. Placing a pair of parallel lines on either side of the circle often represented the sun and the solstices.

It didn’t take much to replace those two parallel lines with the two Saint Johns to have a whole new Masonic symbol.

Interestingly enough, those two saints are much more important in American Freemasonry today, having been replaced in Great Britain by Solomon and Moses as less sectarian representatives of the Craft.

I suggest that many of the “trappings” we associate with Masonry today are not of ancient origin at all, but came into at least rudimentary use during the first several decades of the eighteenth century. Not only did the Freemasons who gathered in 1717 and immediately thereafter decide to have elaborate symbolism associated with their fraternity, but they also had the knowledge and ability to construct such symbolism with some credibility and cohesion.

And so we return to the texts of this sermon.

So much depends…

So much depends on the fact that four lodges of masons decided to meet together on June 24, 1717.

Two roads diverged that day. The meeting could have been nothing more than a festive banquet, replete with fellowship. good food, good drink, and good will. That would have been the well-traveled road. The less-traveled road led to the founding of a new organization, and endowing it with symbols and ceremonies of almost universal significance.

And that has made all the difference.

Thank you! You may open your envelopes at your leisure.

[2] The poem is in the public domain.

[3] The Marsengill article may be found online at http://www.yorkrite.com/ia/lodge2/05.html. It is part of a book of essays entitled How To Kick a Sacred Cow and Other Thrilling Tales From The Great Rebellion, by Jerry Marsengill (Iowa Research Lodge No. 2, second printing, 1978).

^{^[4]}H. L. Haywood and James E. Craig, History of Freemasonry, (New York: The John Day Company, 1927), p. 219.

^{^[5]}George E. Maine, “Desaguliers and The March of Militant Masonry,” reprinted in One More Time, Please, Vol. 5, No. 3, March 2000.

^{^[6]}Phil Elam, “Why St. John’s” on the web site The Masonic Trowel, http://www.themasonictrowel.com/Articles/Symbolism/st_johns_files/why_st_john.htm

The Ancient Contract

2011-03-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

A talk by Timothy J. Whipple - February 25, 2011

The subject of my remarks tonight is Masonic jurisprudence. And, I would like to begin by explaining what I mean by that.

The term “jurisprudence” is sometimes used generically to mean “a body of law,” or, more precisely, to mean the statutes, administrative rules, and judicial decisions comprising that body of law. In this sense of the term, “Masonic jurisprudence” means something like “the law of Masonry” and refers to the collection of rules that govern the day-to-day operation of the craft. As important as that subject may be, it’s not my intention tonight to discuss the provisions of the Iowa Masonic Code, or past grand master’s rulings, or how to conduct a Masonic trial. For that matter, I don’t intend to focus on the landmarks either, at least not in a conventional sense.

What, then, do I mean when I say “Masonic jurisprudence?” Well, “jurisprudence” can also mean the “philosophy or science of law.” When used in this sense, “Masonic jurisprudence” means something more abstract. It means viewing and understanding Masonry from the vantage point of the law. It means examining the assumptions, reasoning, and principles of the law and then applying them to the practice of Freemasonry. And that is the sense in which I will be using the term. To that end, my approach tonight will be to discuss certain fundamental Anglo-American legal principles and then explore how they help us better understand Freemasonry.

But, you might be wondering, to what purpose? What do we gain by looking at Masonry through the prism of the law? My response is that by doing so, we gain a deeper understanding of both the law and Freemasonry. For example, jurisprudence inquires into the sources and legitimacy of the law and into the law’s intersection with philosophy and politics. It asks a host of fundamental questions, such as: What is the relationship of law to society? What is the relationship of law to morality? If morality is the foundation of law, but society’s morals have changed, then shouldn’t the law change, too? Or should society instead seek to preserve and strengthen old laws as a bulwark against social and political change?

As difficult as these questions may be, our legal system confronts them on a practical level every day. Jurisprudence, or “the philosophy or science of law,” is the discipline that explains how the law actually goes about answering such questions and, perhaps more importantly, how it should go about answering them.

Jurisprudence, then, is a critical discipline. For if we don’t ask these kinds of questions, we won’t have the right understanding of the role of law in our society. There is a danger in allowing ourselves to view law merely as a set of rules to be followed because, if we mindlessly adhere to rules, without understanding their purposes or questioning their continuing relevance, then as a society we will become rigid, unjust, and anachronistic: always looking backward and forever governed by the dead hand of the past.

On the other hand, if we ask hard questions about the law, and if we understand and use it as a way of thinking about problems and a method for generating solutions, then our society will be always nimble, always responsive, and constantly poised for the future.

Masonry, though a private society, has rules for its governance no less than society at large, and therefore Masonry, no less than society at large, stands to benefit from this “philosophy or science of law.”

Just as jurisprudence inquires about the role of law in society, Masonic jurisprudence inquires about the role of law in Masonry. It, too, asks questions, such as: How has the law shaped Masonry? How should it shape Masonry? What does the law have to teach us about being a Mason? If Masonry and the law have certain principles in common, how should Masonry respond when the law changes?

To me, these are vital questions, for I view myself as having a contract with the fraternity and I therefore see the fundamentals of Masonry much more clearly by the light of the law that governs contracts.

Now, perhaps this is no great insight. Likely every one of the illustrious lawyers and judges who have served the fraternity has had this insight. Certainly, anyone who has read Dr. Mackey on Masonic jurisprudence understands that Masonry is a contract. Then again, not everyone is a lawyer, and not everyone has read Dr. Mackey.

But all of us, even (perhaps especially) the lawyers, can benefit from a closer look at the law of Contracts and its intersections with Masonry. Doing so reveals that at the very heart of the craft there is an agreement between each Mason and the fraternity itself that contains all the essential elements of a legally binding contract. Moreover, once properly understood as a contract, certain Masonic philosophies may be cast in a new light for us.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. For all of you who just said to yourselves Wait a minute, I never signed a contract when I became a Mason!, let us begin by discussing a few principles from the law of contracts.

As general matter, contract law is the body of law that determines whether a promise is binding. In fact, the law of contracts can quite accurately be called the law of promises. There is, I think, a common misconception that a contract equals a document, and that you don’t have a binding contract unless you have a document and a signature. However, the fact that Masonry doesn’t hand you a stack of papers to be signed in triplicate, doesn’t mean you haven’t entered into a contract. Generally speaking, it’s quite legal for a contract to be entirely an oral affair. While a signed document turns out to be the best evidence of who promised what to whom, it’s the promises themselves, not the document, that truly create a contract.

So, what is a promise? Legally speaking, a promise is a statement indicating an intention to act, or to refrain from acting, in a specified way, at some time in the future. A promise must be made in such a way as to justify another person in understanding that a commitment has been made.

But if a promise indicates a commitment, then what distinguishes a promise from a contract? Well, for one thing, a contract is a very particular kind of promise. Every contract includes at least one promise, but not every promise creates a contract. The difference is that the law considers the keeping of a contractual promise to be an obligation.

Another thing that distinguishes a promise from a contract is that a contract involves a bargain, a “meeting of the minds” in which the parties agree to an exchange of promises. A lonely promise, even one signed and in writing, is like one hand clapping. Without both parties bringing something to the deal, there won’t be a contract.

For example, suppose that I promise to give you a million dollars. Without any expectation that you’ll do anything in return for it. In that case, we don’t have a contract. We have a promise by me which, if kept, would be considered a gift. Moreover, I could write this promise down in a document and sign it, but that alone still wouldn’t make it a contract. If I subsequently decide to change my mind about the promise and refuse to give you the money, you’re simply out of luck. It won’t be considered a contract.

In law, for there to be a contract, that is, for there to be a binding and enforceable promise that gives rise to certain rights and benefits, three essential elements must be present: First, there must be an offer. Second, there must be an acceptance of that offer. Third, there must be a consideration involved. So, let us consider each of these three elements in more detail.

An offer is simply an invitation to enter into a bargain. However, it must be made in such a way that it is clear to the person being invited that his assent is sought and, if obtained, will conclude the bargain. Without any further negotiating. A true offer gives the power to accept it to the person receiving the offer, and it is that person’s decision whether or not to agree to the terms of the proposed bargain. Typically, an offer will require that the person being invited promise to do something.

But remember, a contract is a two way street. When the person being invited promises to do what the offer requires, he’s doing it in return for something that was promised to him in the terms of the offer. This allows him to determine whether the rights or benefits he will get from the deal are worth whatever he must promise in order to get them. If he decides that the rights or benefits are worth it, then he will make the necessary promise in return for them. That’s what an acceptance is. It is a return promise that signifies consent to the terms of the offer.

For example, again suppose I promise to give you a million dollars. But this time, I ask you to promise a few things in return. First, I ask for your car. Second, I ask that you personally deliver it to my house next month. Third, I ask that you personally clean it before delivery. Finally, I ask that between now and next week, you refrain from smoking inside of it.

But we could even get more complex than that with the terms of the bargain. Let’s say, for example, that I’m not sure the prospect of getting a million dollars is enough to actually make you do the things I’m asking you to promise to do, and that I want a little extra insurance. In that case, I might further demand that, as the penalty for breaking our deal, you agree not only to return the million dollars, but that I get to keep your car as well.

Now, that’s a lot to consider. Not only does the deal I’m offering ask a lot of you, there are penalties involved if you don’t follow through on it. On the other hand, you will get a lot of money in return for doing it. So if you decide that having all that money is worth it to you, and you go ahead and promise to do the things I’m asking, then you will have accepted my offer.

However, to be valid, an acceptance must not only manifest agreement with the requirements contained in the offer, a proper acceptance must also be given in the manner specified by the offer. That is, like an image reflected in a mirror, the acceptance must comply with the terms of the offer exactly.

In a written contract situation, you simply read the agreement carefully and sign it. You are deemed to understand it and to understand that by signing it, you have agreed to the terms presented in it.

In a verbal contract, though, you must be more careful about the form of the acceptance. For instance, the offer might stipulate that it can only be accepted by making an affirmative answer using certain very particular phrases.

For example, as part of that offer to give you a million dollars, suppose that I require you to repeat the terms of the offer back to me exactly as I presented them to you. If that’s what my offer demands, then you can’t simply say “OK” in response, you actually have to repeat the words back to me, saying: “I promise to give you my car, I promise to clean it, I promise to deliver it to you next month, and I furthermore promise not to smoke in it.”

But why do this? Well, remember that this is a verbal agreement we’re talking about here. You need to demonstrate that you’ve clearly heard and understood all the terms I’ve offered you. That way, even without reading through some lengthy document, there can be no doubt that there is a “meeting of the minds” between us. If there is, then there will be a proper acceptance of the offer.

The final element of a contract is closely related to this meeting of the minds. Within the law of contracts, it is known as “consideration.” The concept of consideration is somewhat amorphous and easily misunderstood, but it is perhaps best defined as “something of value, promised by each of the parties to an agreement, which induces the other party to enter into the agreement.” In other words, each person has to be promising to give the very thing that the other person is asking for in return. This concept is also called “a bargained for exchange.” One way to understand this concept better is to examine a deal without a correctly formed bargain.

For example, suppose I promise to give you a check for a million dollars and that I keep that promise. Then, after you’ve cashed the check, you call me up, tell me how grateful you are to me and promise to give me your car, to clean it and deliver it yourself next month, and not to smoke in it in the meantime. This sounds a lot like the deal I described a moment ago, doesn’t it? In each case, I’m giving you a million dollars, and you’re promising to do a bunch of stuff for me.

But in this case, there’s a problem with the consideration. When I gave you the money, I wasn’t asking that you do anything for it, and moreover, when you later called me up and promised to do those things, you already had the money in hand. In other words, there was no bargained for exchange and no meeting of the minds.

There was, in other words, no consideration. Consideration requires that each party has to be seeking the exchange up front, one promise given in return for the other, simultaneously, quid pro quo. Without consideration, there’s no contract, and without a contract, the promises are unenforceable.

So, with a firmer grasp on the principles of contract law, consider the Masonic ritual. Notice how scrupulously the formalities of contract formation are observed by the ritual. Before any man is made a Mason, he is advised of the solemnity and importance of the step he is about to take and informed that every Mason takes on certain obligations, things which he must, and must not, do. Because of the nature of these obligations, he is given the chance to withdraw before going further.

If, however, he is willing take on these obligations, then he is presented with the terms of the Masonic offer. This offer is, of course, not written down, and so its terms must be repeated aloud. In doing so, the candidate must explicitly affirm his willingness to make the necessary promises. For the most part, the terms simply require that he follow the rules of the fraternity, but they do contain a penalty for violating the promise.

Then, immediately after the candidate gives his promise, the fraternity makes him a promise in return. That is, the candidate is asked what he wants from Masonry, and when he responds that he is seeking enlightenment, he is assured that he will receive it.

To me, this is a pivotal moment in the ritual and it is no coincidence that this moment also mirrors the most crucial element of contract law. For at that point in the ritual, the lodge and the candidate are bargaining with each other. For its part, the lodge seeks a good and faithful brother and it offers enlightenment in return. For his part, the candidate seeks enlightenment and promises to be a good and faithful brother in return. Since each party to the contract is trying to obtain the very thing that the other one is offering, there is a consideration flowing between them. And therefore a contract, albeit a Masonic contract, is formed.

We live today in a casual culture. A freewheeling and less rule-bound society than the one that gave rise to our ritual. To many of us, the formalistic elements of the ritual may seem like an anachronism, a relic from a bygone era. But the formation of the Masonic contract is, and must be, no less carefully observed today than when it was first laid down.

That’s because a contract, when properly formed, can be enforced. For example, if you were to break our deal for the million dollars, I could go to court and have a judge order you to give me your car. Or order you to stop smoking in it. Or even order you to return the million dollars. It might seem harsh, but the law imposes consequences for breaking the deal. And that’s the most important difference between a mere promise and a contract.

Because harsh consequences can be imposed for breaching a contract, the law has always been reluctant to recognize the existence of a contract in certain situations.

For example, a contract made under duress or undue influence won’t be enforced. If I induce you to sign a contract by holding a gun to your head, the contract won’t be enforceable. Even if it meets the elements of offer, acceptance, and consideration. The reason for this is that the law recognizes that, before it can enforce a contract against you, it must be clear that you made the promises contained in it of your own free will and accord. After all, if you were forced to do something, it would be morally objectionable to hold you to a promise you didn’t truly intend to make.

Another type of contract that won’t be enforced is one in which one party lacks the ability to understand the nature and consequences of his actions. For example, a contract made with a young child, or with a senile elderly person, or with someone who has a mental illness or defect is generally not enforceable. The reason for this is that the law recognizes that, before it can enforce a contract against you, it must be clear that you are competent and that you have a certain minimum level of mental capacity such that you are able to govern your own affairs. After all, it would be morally objectionable to hold you to a promise you weren’t capable of understanding.

In short, you must not only be able to think for yourself, you must actually do so when entering into a contract. This is because the law places a premium on the autonomy of individuals. To put it another way, if the law of contracts were a private club, it would only admit through its doors people who are rational enough to make informed, independently considered, and un-coerced decisions on their own behalf.

That is the general principle, at least. The rub, though, is that historically, the law has denied this freedom of contract to some people whom we now generally consider to be capable of making decisions for themselves.

For example, when slavery was legal in America, the law generally denied slaves the right to make contracts. This was in fact the primary difference between the slave labor system that existed in the Antebellum South, and the wage labor system that existed in the North. Free men could, by contract, sell their labor to the highest bidder and could expect the courts to enforce such contracts. If a slave made a contract, however, a free person could break that contract without fear of a court intervening. Not only that, but the denial of the freedom to contract influenced the laws that denied slaves the ability to marry, which is a form of contract.

The obvious question is why did the law deny the freedom of contract in those cases? Well, leaving aside, for present purposes, historical attitudes of racial superiority, there remains the fact that a slave, by virtue of his condition, lacks the right and the opportunity to make decisions about his own condition. The assumption, deeply embedded within the law was that such a person, unaccustomed to making his own decisions, must also be incapable of making such decisions, and therefore not competent to make and keep contracts.

With the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, however, this assumption was recognized as having no rational basis. As the law eventually recognized, when given the opportunity, even a man born into slavery has the capacity to make his own decisions, and one of the first rights granted to freed slaves in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the right to make contracts and have them enforced.

Like slaves, women, too, have historically not been allowed the full range of contract rights. In almost every era, in almost every society, you find the law denying autonomy to women. In ancient Rome, a man actually had the power of life and death over all the members of his family.

Many societies, in one form or another, have allowed women to be bought, sold, and even stolen, as a means of social, political, and economic currency. Sometimes, a father would ask for property in exchange for the right to marry his daughter. Other times he might offer property to induce another man to marry her. Such bargains could involve significant amounts of wealth and property changing hands, thereby requiring settled principles of law to prevent and resolve disputes. Over time, contracts came to be used to enforce such deals, and legal doctrines such as dowry and coverture were created to govern the property exchanges and prescribe the rights and duties of the parties involved in the formation of these marriage contracts.

For hundreds of years, in both England and America, a married woman’s legal identity was considered to be subsumed within her husband’s. Her name was his name. Her property was his property. Without his signature, she couldn’t sign mortgages or other financial instruments that created debts against the couple’s property. In short, as the eminent legal authority Sir William Blackstone once noted, “the husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.” Like slaves, then, women were not generally allowed to make decisions for themselves, and like slaves were deemed not competent to do so.

The lesson here is twofold: First, that the law has a history of jealously guarding the freedom of contract, reserving its rights and benefits to a few, while also protecting some people from getting in over their heads. Second, that the law on these points is not today what it was in Blackstone’s time. The law now gives full autonomy to women and no countenance to slavery.

But, once again we must inquire, what does that have to do with the practice of Freemasonry? And again, recall the ritual, specifically the qualifications for admission into the fraternity. If we could travel in time back to the 18th century, to the time of the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England, we would find that the list of those denied the freedom of contract closely resembles the list of those who may not become Masons, including: Young men in nonage, old men in dotage, men who are not freeborn, madmen, fools, and women.

This can be no coincidence. The inescapable conclusion is that the 18th century Englishmen who established the first Grand Lodge believed that, like the freedom to contract, Freemasonry should only be practiced by those who can, and do, think for themselves.

One of the reasons for this overlap of law and Masonry was that, in the 18th century, the philosophers and academics of the time consciously engaged in a public discussion of human progress, including an attempt to define the term enlightenment.

Perhaps the most famous definition of enlightenment was offered in 1784 by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who wrote an influential essay entitled “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?” In that essay, Kant described enlightenment this way:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in a lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! - "Have courage to use your own understanding!"-- that is the motto of enlightenment.

That passage, written in English, uses the term “immaturity.” Kant himself, though, writing in German, used the word “Unmündigkeit,” which means “not having attained the age of majority, or not having attained adulthood.” The word is closely related to the word “Unmündig” which can be translated as “dependent” or “unfree.” In other words, Kant’s conception of Enlightenment is a process by which we emancipate ourselves from our former child-like state in which we allowed others to do our thinking for us.

One of the prerequisites of this self-emancipation, by the way, is education. And not just any old learning, but the study of those disciplines known as the Liberal Arts. The Latin root of the word Liberal is liber, meaning “free.” Furthermore, consider why they are called the liberal arts: in classical and medieval times, they were the subjects of education most befitting a “free” person.

Slaves, tenant farmers, other common laborers, and most women might have received training in a vocation, but generally only gentlemen studied grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, music, and geometry. An education in these subjects does not guarantee you a profitable trade. The purpose of studying them is not only for their intrinsic knowledge, but also because doing so teaches you how to think for yourself.

Acquiring such an education is not easy. Learning to think for yourself is harder than letting others do it for you. Which is why, in his essay on enlightenment, Kant goes on to say:

It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.

The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult...

Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it.

Notice, in that passage, that Kant makes two by now familiar assumptions. First, he assumes that all women (the entire fair sex) regard self-emancipation as a risky process. Second, he says that someone who has never thought for himself is, at least temporarily, actually incapable of doing so. Yet despite the inherent difficulties, Kant does believe this process of achieving emancipation is possible if we work on it.

The key to spreading enlightenment, according to Kant, is to encourage the use of reason. He says:

Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.

At this point, recall the earlier discussion of the element of consideration and what it is that every Mason bargains for when he joins the fraternity. If the use of reason is essential for enlightenment, then the use of reason is also essential to Masonry.

And, it should come as no surprise that many consider the use of reason to be the foundational principle of the law as well. Aristotle famously wrote that “The law is reason, free from passion.” What he meant was that the law must strive to be a rational process that subdues the bias and prejudice inherent in human nature.

The problem is, however, that in the course of its history, the law has not always been strictly rational. Sometimes, legal principles are ignored, incorrectly applied, or simply misunderstood. Each time that happens, a potentially problematic precedent is created. If, by its influence, it becomes sufficiently damaging to society, it must be corrected or reinterpreted at a later time. At other times, the principles of the law are well understood, but our own assumptions and understandings of the world around us change enough to bring about a different legal result.

While it might not get every decision right, if the law employs reason consistently to reach its conclusions, then it will be able to solve new problems and meet the needs of each new generation in order to maintain its relevancy, its legitimacy, and ultimately its authority.

In a famous and influential series of lectures delivered in the late 19th century, the iconic Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. explained the development and history of the Common Law this way:

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.

A very common phenomenon, and one very familiar to the student of history, is this. The customs, beliefs, or needs of a primitive time establish a rule or a formula. In the course of centuries the custom, belief, or necessity disappears, but the rule remains. The reason which gave rise to the rule has been forgotten, and ingenious minds set themselves to inquire how it is to be accounted for. Some ground of policy is thought of, which seems to explain it and to reconcile it with the present state of things; and then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which have been found for it, and enters on a new career. The old form receives a new content, and in time even the form modifies itself to fit the meaning which it has received.

The official theory is that each new decision follows syllogistically from existing precedents. But just as the clavicle in the cat only tells of the existence of some earlier creature to which a collar-bone was useful, precedents survive in the law long after the use they once served is at an end and the reason for them has been forgotten. The result of following them must often be failure and confusion from the merely logical point of view.

When we find that in large and important branches of the law the various grounds of policy on which the various rules have been justified are later inventions to account for what are in fact survivals from more primitive times, we have a right to reconsider the popular reasons, and, taking a broader view of the field, to decide anew whether those reasons are satisfactory

In other words, the law constantly evolves. Not just the rules, but the reasons for them. One generation lays down a rule in order to enforce some public policy acceptable to the community. Then, later generations, forgetting the policy that gave rise to the rule, continue to enforce the rule for no other reason than that it has always been so.

According to Holmes, those later generations have a right to reconsider the reasons for the rule and make a determination as to whether they still justify the rule laid down to further them. If they don’t, then new reasons must be found or else the rule changed.

This is precisely what has happened in the law of contracts since the 18th century when the Grand Lodge was formed. Slavery is no longer legal. Women can vote and enter into contracts. Minors can, at their election, still void a contract, but laws on the age of majority and the emancipation of minors are now quite different.

Through a process very much like Holmes described, the law has eventually come to recognize that the true principle underlying the freedom of contract is the ability to think for oneself. Society’s former assumptions, particularly about women and slaves have been reassessed. It is now acknowledged that they can and do think for themselves, and for that reason, the law no longer withholds from them the rights, benefits, or consequences that flow from the making of contracts.

Certainly the similarities between Masonic law and the old common law of contracts invite us to consider any number of provocative questions: Can Masonry follow the same path that the law has taken in these areas? Should it? What is the purpose and function of the free-born requirement in a society without indentured servitude, serfdom, or slavery? Should Masonry dispense with a strict age requirement for candidates and replace it with a more flexible requirement of the ability to think for oneself? If our exclusion of women shares the same assumptions as the old common law of contracts, perhaps we should articulate new reasons to support that policy if we are committed to maintaining it?

There aren’t necessarily answers to those questions, but rather the hope that asking them and discussing them can lead to more informed Masonic jurisprudence. That is, rather than making rules or issuing declarations of policy, the true project of Masonic jurisprudence ought to be to constantly engage with questions such as these, for by engaging them we will not only renew our understanding of where we have been, but reaffirm in our minds where we are bound.

As part of this process, we shouldn’t simply accept every decision made by our venerable brothers of the hoary past as if such decisions can’t be changed. We should evaluate the legitimacy of those decisions on their own merits, not based on when they were made or who made them. As Holmes would say, we have a right to review the reasons for a policy and assess whether it still works for us today. If it doesn’t work well anymore, we should determine how, within the confines of Masonic law, it can be adapted for the betterment of the fraternity.

This is no more and no less than what the law does everyday. Case by case, decision by decision, legislators, lawyers, judges, and litigants make and entertain arguments about the law: What it is, whether it should change, and if so, in what way. Sometimes it changes rapidly, such as in the civil rights era. Sometimes it changes almost imperceptibly, such as in the law of real property. But even when it doesn’t change, society is strengthened merely by entertaining the arguments because at the end of the process we can reaffirm that we are indeed committed to a policy. The only mistake is to believe that we cannot change.

On the one hand, I lament the fact that our fraternity is sometimes perceived by society at large as something of a retrograde institution, and I wonder what can be done to change such perceptions. It wasn’t always so. Once upon a time, Masonry was esteemed as a progressive and enlightened project. On the other hand, I, as every Mason ought to be, am mindful of Proverbs 22:28 which cautions us not to remove the ancient landmarks which our fathers have set.

It is these two conflicting notions that constitute the central tension at the heart of Masonic jurisprudence. Enshrined in the text of Anderson’s constitutions of 1723, there is a clause that reads “Every Annual Grand Lodge has an inherent power and Authority to make new Regulations or to alter these, for the real benefits of this Ancient Fraternity.” Now, that is a mandate for progressive Masonry if ever there was one! Yet, the very next clause says “Provided always that the old Land-Marks be carefully preserved.” Which is a mandate for conservative Masonry if ever there was one!

These two clauses have created a longstanding tension in Masonic jurisprudence. The latter clause in particular has been the cause of the last couple hundred years of argument about what the landmarks are. Everyone from Dr. Mackey to Roscoe Pound to Joseph Fort Newton has weighed in on this question. But no one has ever settled it, and most think that it can’t be definitively settled.

I certainly understand why generation after generation of Masons keeps debating this question. It is the ultimate question in Masonic jurisprudence. If a rule, usage, or custom of the fraternity is deemed to be a landmark, then it must be preserved. It becomes inviolable and unchangeable. Mackey, Pound, and others have analogized the landmarks to the United States Constitution.

That is, it is common to assume, after Mackey, that the landmarks should be viewed as the Supreme Law of Masonry, just as the US Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land. If this is correct, then determining whether something is a landmark is very much akin to determining whether a law is unconstitutional. And arguments about the landmarks are often conducted much like constitutional arguments.

There are at least two problems with this analogy.

The first problem with the analogy is that it encourages us to make ultimate arguments when it is not necessary to do so. This is especially tempting when there is a contentious issue or a policy concern that people would like to put beyond the reach of debate. This happens all the time in Constitutional law.

For example, when the Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case, the authors of that opinion hoped to settle once, and for all time, whether or not the Congress could prohibit slavery in the territories. If you can successfully argue that it is unconstitutional, then there is no need to debate whether it is wise or unwise public policy to regulate slavery in the territories.

Likewise, if you can successfully argue that women have a constitutional right to privacy, then there is no need to argue whether it is wise or unwise public policy to regulate abortion, and to what extent.

If you can successfully argue that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, then there is no need to argue whether it is wise or unwise public policy to regulate the interstate health insurance markets.

In other words, everyone seems to want to believe that some policy they dislike must be unconstitutional because they very much like the result if it is.

I suspect that no small part of what drove Dr. Mackey to formulate his infamous twenty-five landmarks was a desire to put at least a few of them beyond debate. Mackey knew as well as anyone that the landmarks are nowhere written nor even generally agreed upon. Likely he felt that his landmarks were good, sound policy for the craft to adopt, and he therefore sought to “constitutionalize” them as a way of ensuring adherence to them.

But this is a dangerous approach to jurisprudence, and it is lamentable that one man’s notion of what our foundational law should be has been so influential over the years. We should once again learn a lesson from the law here. Plainly, it is not necessary to declare every bad policy unconstitutional. If a policy isn’t a good idea, then it needn’t be pursued.

Just as plainly, in Freemasonry, it isn’t necessary to declare every usage and custom that we value to be a landmark in order to preserve it. If all acclaim a custom as a good one, then it will be followed without complaint. The great mistake, however, is to enshrine as a landmark some fad of the day and thereby limit the choices and options available to later generations of Masons.

If you think this is a radical idea, consider that Thomas Jefferson once expressed to James Madison the opinion that a constitution should expire every 19 years so that one generation is prevented from binding another.

The second problem with analogizing the landmarks to the Constitution is that it’s a poor analogy.

For one thing, all are agreed that the landmarks can’t be changed. The Constitution, however, can be changed. In fact, it’s been amended 27 times since it was first adopted.

For another thing, there is no definitive list of the landmarks and it’s rare to find two Masonic scholars who agree on what they are. H.B. Grant of Kentucky once enumerated 54 landmarks. Joseph Fort Newton, on the other hand, once said they are simply: “The fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the moral law, the Golden Rule, and the hope of life everlasting.” The Constitution, notwithstanding arguments over its interpretation, is clearly written and has been used as a governing document for hundreds of years now. There is no dispute as to what the document says, only as to how to apply it.

A better analogy for the landmarks is to compare them to natural law or natural rights. That is, there are many Americans who believe that mankind has been endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Certainly, those rights and others find protection in various clauses within the Constitution, but we find them stated in their most poetic form in the Declaration of Independence which has no binding authority whatsoever.

Understood this way, the Declaration isn’t used to decide cases or pass statutes but rather it is used as a statement of philosophy about how we should understand and interpret the Constitution. Lincoln, for example, thought the Declaration represented a kind of moral compass that could be used to guide our understanding of the law even though the Declaration itself isn’t a source of law for the nation in the way the Constitution is.

Moreover, like natural rights, the landmarks of Freemasonry are unenumerated. And they are not universally agreed upon. They are an expression of something fundamental about the fraternity, a set of guiding principles. They under-gird our very identity, yet they lack concrete expression. They certainly don’t take the form of legal propositions that can be readily and accurately applied to the daily governance of the craft.

I’m not suggesting that we should stop discussing our foundational principles and philosophies. That process is fundamental to our conception of identity. What I am suggesting, tough, is that we should not expect that such discussions will result in a clearly stated list of immutable and universal principles. It simply won’t happen. We would be much better off treating Anderson’s constitutions as the source of Masonic jurisprudence, for that document can be examined, interpreted, and applied with more clarity and consistency than can the landmarks Anderson mentions in passing.

If we can agree to build our jurisprudence on a more concrete foundation, and avoid the kind of ultimate arguments that are so common in discussion of the landmarks, then we can move ourselves forward to consider the other great principle from Anderson’s constitutions: identifying and achieving “real benefits for the fraternity.”

To anyone who thinks this notion is a little too progressive or even radical, I will make the case that we certainly wouldn’t be the first generation of Masons to approach the future of the fraternity from this perspective.

In 1703, under the Grand Mastership of Sir Christopher Wren, the fraternity made perhaps the single most important and fundamental change in our history by adopting a regulation stating “that the privileges of Masonry should no longer be restricted to operative Masons, but extended to men of various professions...”

Thus I say, let us today be no less progressive than the Masons of 1703!

THE COUNCIL DEGREES ORIGINS OF THE CRYPTIC RITE IN AMERICA

2010-10-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

By
Kevin T. Christians
Specialis Procer Lodge #678

The Council Degrees, or Cryptic Rite, are such an inspiring and thought provoking subject that a brief discussion of their origins would seem to be in order before progressing further into the subject. Given the fact that I am not a Masonic Scholar, nor have I ever professed to be one, this project was as much a learning experience for me personally as I trust it is for all of you. Therefore, let us proceed to a brief background of the origins of these Degrees:

As with much of Freemasonry, no one knows for sure but there are several theories. There is a "Baltimore theory," and a "Berlin theory," but the most likely one is the "Scottish Rite theory," and the most interesting is the "Stuart theory."

The Scottish Rite theory is that the Cryptic degrees were invented in France together with the other degrees that were included in the Rite of Perfection, which later were collected into what is today the Scottish Rite, and that the Cryptic degrees were brought to America just like the Scottish Rite degrees by Stephen Morin from France in 1761. When the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the U.S. was organized in 1802 in Charleston, the degrees which are now in the Scottish Rite were organized, while some "detached" degrees, including the Royal and Select degrees, which had previously been given, were now dropped. Some of those who had received these degrees then conferred them on their own and established Councils in the process.

The Stuart theory is interesting and needs some explanation. The Stuart family ruled England starting in 1603, with a break from 1649 to 1660 after Charles I was executed by Parliament under Oliver Cromwell. The last Stuart to reign, James II, was forced to abdicate in 1688. After the Hanoverian family came to the English throne in 1714 with George I, the Stuarts invaded England in 1715 and 1745, by way of Scotland, which supported them, but both attempts failed. The Stuarts and their supporters lived in exile in France, which recognized their claim, and they continued to try to regain their throne for many years with the support of some in England. The Stuart exiles living in France in the early 1700's, sometimes called "Jacobites" from the Latin form of the name for James, were involved in Freemasonry. Some Masonic lodges in France and Italy were made up completely of Jacobites, and the grandson of James II, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" was definitely an active Mason. In 1745, the same year he attempted to invade England, he became the Grand Master of the Masonic Knights Templar, and also formed a Chapter of Rose Croix. The Jacobite Masons considered the death of Hiram Abiff to represent the execution by the English Parliament of Charles I, the father of James II, and the raising of Hiram Abiff to represent the coming restoration to the English throne of the Stuart Kings. The "Royal Master" was the Stuart claimant to the throne, who was called by some the "Pretender" to the throne (at first James II, then his son James III, and then the grandson, Charles), and the secret vault was the place where the Jacobites plotted their return to power. The "Select Masters" were the closest companions of the "Pretender.". The ritual of the Select Master's degree can easily be seen to be that of a secret political movement, if one believes this theory. I choose to endorse the Scottish Rite theory.

The term “Cryptic” is used to denote that part of the Masonic system which is so closely allied to and follows in natural progression the Degree of the Royal Arch. The degrees now conferred in Councils of Royal and Select Masters were claimed and conferred by the Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, although these degrees existed before the establishment of Supreme Councils. The first individual to use the term “Cryptic” to describe the Council Degrees was Companion Robert Morris of Kentucky.
The word is derived from the Latin crypticus, meaning concealed or subterranean, and that from the Greek krupte, which signifies a vault, or subterranean passage. We are told that primitive Christians exemplified the ceremonials of their secret worship in earth covered cells or caves, known as cryptae. Likewise, the vaults beneath the great cathedrals and churches of the world are known simply as crypts. The degrees of the Council of Royal and Select Masters are thus called “Cryptic Masonry”, or “Masonry of the Secret Vault”. The degrees comprise those of Royal, Select, and Super Excellent Master. The degrees should be of particular interest to the Companions of Capitular Masonry, and are today placed in a logical order in the American York Rite.

Dr. Albert Mackey, once the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite at Charleston, South Carolina, tells us that the Council Degrees were beyond doubt honorary or side degrees, belonging to and conferred by Inspectors-General of the Scottish Rite. Whatever claim the Scottish Rite had on them were abdicated by the Scottish Rite in Baltimore in 1870. A resolution, no doubt, that Albert Pike had a hand in. While Pike was meticulous in his research and preparation, I find it curious that “Uncle Albert” would part with such wonderful degrees had he understood the full ramifications of what he and the Supreme Council were truly parting ways with. Given the fact that in 1850, the Scottish Rite claimed jurisdiction over the Cryptic Degrees, we should examine what influenced this Body to relinquish all claims to the degrees a mere twenty years later.

The degrees were originally independent of one another, and were doubtless the side degrees of the Rite of Perfection. This Rite was brought to America by Stephen Morin in 1762. Morin, a French Mason, was given the title of Inspector General for the new world by the Grand Consistory of Princes of the Royal Secret in Paris. After Morin sailed from France to go to the West Indies, his ship was surrounded by British men of war. He was actually held in England for a short period of time before being permitted to continue his journey to the Caribbean. Whether his initial destination was Kingston, Jamaica or another Caribbean port is not known. While in the West Indies, Brother Morin conferred the degrees of the Rite of Perfection on many candidates, as Masonry was not only alive, but was a strong presence in that part of the world. During this period of time, Morin appointed Henry A. Francken a Deputy Inspector of the Rite, and empowered him to proliferate the Rite. The Rite of Perfection consisted of twenty five degrees at that time, in addition to a number of side degrees, giving a total of fifty three in the aggregate. Among these disengaged degrees were “Select Mason of the Twenty-Seven” (eventually Select Master) and “Royal Master”. History shows no connection between these two degrees at the time.

Morin eventually did land in Kingston, and was present at a Consistory of Princes of the Royal Secret in 1769. It is sometime subsequent to this that he deputized Francken, although Pike, when reviewing the Constitutions of 1786, stated that he was not in possession of “all the successive deputizations or their dates made by Morin or when deputies were created”. Further evidence seems to point to the fact that Francken communicated these degrees to Moses Michael Hayes of Boston and made him a Deputy Inspector-General for North America. The appointments of Francken and Hayes gave them the authority to appoint others. Whether these appointments made by Morin were actually done in the United States has never been verified or ascertained with any certainty. However, it seems to be a moot point as Francken and Hayes now had the authority to appoint others, and therefore one Moses Cohen was appointed with the same authority. Hayes then appointed Isaac Da Costa as Inspector-General for South Carolina. On Da Costa’s demise, he was succeeded by Joseph Myers. On December 20th, 1767, Francken opened a Lodge of Perfection at Albany, New York on Morin’s authority.

On October 25th, 1762, the Grand Masonic Constitutions were ratified in Berlin and the official copies transmitted to Morin, who acknowledged and accepted them. The Supreme Council, established in Charleston in 1801, was the first body of the Rite by that name that ever existed. This divergence from the history of the Cryptic Rite proper, and the references to the Ancient and Accepted Rite, are necessary as showing the genuineness of the Royal and Select Degrees, and the claims they have as being bona fide side degrees of the Rite of Perfection.

Cohen then journeyed to Jamaica and established a Consistory there. One of its members was Abram Jacobs, who had received a portion of the degrees. One of these degrees was known as the “Select Masons of the Twenty Seven” and of his having received this degree Cohen gave proof in a certificate dated November 9th, 1790, which stated that he had conferred the degrees on Jacobs.

The year 1792 found Jacobs in Savannah, Georgia, having arrived there from Jamaica. While in Jamaica, he had taken a very active part in Masonic matters, especially in regard to the Rite of Perfection. Certain Masons applied to him to establish a Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection, and he conferred degrees on all who desired to receive and, of course, could pay for them. Brother G. Zimmerman was the first applicant and by letter dated May 27th, 1792, applied to Jacobs requesting him to travel to Augusta, Georgia for the purpose of conferring the degrees. Jacobs then left Augusta, not to return until 1800. He was at Savannah on April 17th, 1796 and his diary indicates that he conferred the degree of “Select Masons of the Twenty-Seven” on Brother James Clark. On December 12th, he conferred this degree on six additional Brothers in Washington, Georgia.

In November of 1802, a friend of Jacobs, Emanuel de la Motta, from Charleston, arrived at Savannah where Jacobs conferred the degree on him. The Royal Arch Chapter of South Carolina then claimed that these degrees were conferred in the Grand Lodge of Perfection in 1783 in Charleston, South Carolina. A certificate signed by one M.C. Levy in 1827 is considered authentic evidence of this statement. Moses Clava Levy was of Polish descent, having been born in Krakow and history judges him as a kind and honest man, loving parent and husband. Levy was a member of the Thirty-Third Degree for the Southern Jurisdiction, organized in 1801.

After Jacobs returned to the United States, he settled in Georgia, and there is evidence he conferred the Select Degree while there. There is further evidence that this degree was also conferred in New York in 1808. Meanwhile, Brother Hayes had been active, and had used the authority invested in him by making Joseph M. Myers and Inspector-General for Maryland. In 1788 he organized a Council of the Princes of Jerusalem in at Charleston, South Carolina. A manuscript copy of the ritual of the Select Degree was deposited in the archives of that Council. Experts have determined that the manuscript is authentic beyond any doubt. It is further asserted that he was in possession of the work of the other degrees, as records indicate that about that time a number of Masons residing in Charleston, received them. The Supreme Council in 1802 did not include all the degrees we claim as belonging to the Cryptic Rite. In a circular containing their list, it stated that in addition to the regular degrees, there were “side degrees” known among them as the “Select Masons of the Twenty-Seven”. It is alleged that in 1803 a copy of this ritual was made by J. Billeaud, and that it is a verbatim copy of the Myers ritual which, in 1788, was deposited by Myers in the archives of the Council at Charleston. A significant work, “The History of Masonry in Maryland”, written by Brother Edward Schultz, refers to the Rite and its early history. These manuscripts show that Henry Wilmans, a Pole, who lived in Baltimore about 1790, organized a Lodge of Perfection. One Philip P. Eckel was a member of this lodge. Wilmans died in 1795, but had previously conferred the Select Degree, and perhaps others, on Eckel and Hezekiah Niles.

Jacobs journeyed to New York in 1804, and conferred the degrees on many applicants, among them Thomas Lownds. In 1808 the dispute between Gourgas and Joseph Cerneau commenced over control of the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction; more importantly, whose version of same was authentic. Lownds sided with Cerneau, and joined forces with him. In so doing, he captured the Royal and Select Degrees, or so Gourgas alleged at the time. Thus, the credit for organizing the first body of the Cryptic Rite must be awarded to Lownds. Among others, he formed the “Columbian Grand Council of Royal Master Masons”. This body accepted into its fold a Council of Select Masters on December 8th, 1821. On January 25th, 1823, Columbian Grand Council constituted themselves a Grand Council for the State, and issued warrants as late as 1827. In 1854 another Grand Council was formed in New York, its members being principally adherents of what was known as the “St. John Grand Lodge”. This Grand Council issued warrants to subordinate Councils, and in 1860 united with “The Columbian”. The records of both these Councils exist today, and have been republished.

A remarkable character now comes into play when discussing this evening’s subject. One Jeremy L. Cross, who was initiated into the Select Degrees by Philip P. Eckel, decided to visit Baltimore, then embark on a tour of the Southern and Western states. While on this tour, he lectured on all the degrees of Freemasonry, even conferring degrees, including the “high grade” or “haute” degrees. It has been implied that this was not purely out of brotherly love, but that it was a quite profitable trade as well. Cross also conferred the Cryptic Degrees on a number of Royal Arch Companions in Windsor, Vermont, issued a warrant for them to open a Council, and then wrote to his mentor, Eckel, for his authority to do so. Eckel and his friend Hezekiah Niles evidently sought each others’ council, for in Cross’ papers, found posthumously, was the authorization to confer the degrees and grant warrants for Councils. Some Masonic scholars have openly challenged the authenticity of these papers.

In 1815 in New Hampshire, and 1817 in Boston, Councils of Royal Masters were formed, albeit without warrants. The members of these bodies received the Select Degree from Cross and merged the two degrees, but it was years later that many of Cross’ Select Councils adopted the Royal Degree as part of their structure. Grand Councils were formed at various dates in the several states, and ultimately a National Convention of Royal and Select Masters was held in Buffalo in 1877 at which Most Illustrious Companions Daniel Spry and J. Ross Robertson were present on behalf of Canada, delegates from the Grand Council of that jurisdiction. Most Illustrious Companion Josiah H. Drummond of Maine presided over the deliberations of the convention. The state of the Rite was discussed, but no definite action was taken. In 1880 another convention of a similar character representing nineteen Grand Councils, met in Detroit Michigan. At this Convention, The General Grand Council of the United States was formed.

Let us then consider that since 1818, Councils of Royal and Select Masters began organizing throughout the United States. We should not contemplate that any assertions made that this was accomplished without episodes of difficulty have merit.
We should, however, regard as significant the several problems that existed during the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite had been formed from the Lodges of Perfection in 1801. The Degrees of Royal and Select Master were still considered “side degrees” of that Rite. After Cross had organized Councils of Royal and Select Masters, and the organization met with general approval, the Scottish Rite began forming identical bodies. These Scottish Rite Councils were not anchored to the Rite, but were cast off to fend for themselves after they had achieved proficiency. It should also be considered that individuals continued to communicate these degrees indiscriminately during this period. Another barrier to the orderly formation of Councils was caused by the Morgan episode and the anti-Masonic feeling it engendered in the United States from 1828 through 1845. A number of Masonic organizations went underground during this period and many never recuperated. Even though the Morgan affair primarily affected Northern Councils, the Civil War resulted in the dissolution of a number of the Southern Councils and Grand Councils. Where Grand Royal Arch Chapters endured through these events, they assumed control of the Council Degrees until Grand Councils could be reorganized. This is true with the exception of Virginia and West Virginia, where the Council Degrees to this day operate under the authority of those states’ Grand Chapters.

Despite various problems, Councils of Royal and Select Masters continued to form throughout the country, and in time, united into Grand Councils. During the decisive period of the middle nineteenth century, Councils of both Jeremy Cross and those of the Scottish Rite origin united and created Grand Councils without incident.

During the early nineteenth century, the Cryptic degrees were conferred in a number of Chapters of Royal Arch Masons. In 1853, the General Grand Chapter voted to abandon any rights or authority over these degrees, with the aforementioned exceptions of the two state Grand Chapters, Virginia and West Virginia. The Supreme Council (Southern Jurisdiction) by edict relinquished any claim to the Cryptic Degrees in 1870.

We should now consider the conclusions of Dr. Albert Gallatin Mackey, 33°, of Charleston, South Carolina. Mackey’s conclusions were not the result of brash or irrational thinking; on the contrary, Mackey’s opinions are the stuff of well thought out concepts supported not only by logic but by his peers. Speaking to origins of the Degrees, Mackey stated:

1) The degrees of Royal and Select Master were originally brought to this country by an Inspector-General of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, in the year 1788, deposited by him in the archives, and placed under the control of the Council of the Princes of Jerusalem, which was organized in the city of Charleston, South Carolina in that year.
2) These degrees were first conferred in Charleston by the Council Princes of Jerusalem as “detached degrees” or what in more modern phrase would be called ‘side degrees’ of the Ancient and Accepted Rite.
3) They were disseminated over the whole country by agents or representatives of this Rite, who conferred them on any qualified person(s) whom they pleased to select, but always with the administration of a pledge of allegiance to the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Rite.
4) Charters were granted by these agents of the Supreme Council for the establishment of Councils of Royal and Select Masters, in different states, which Councils subsequently united in the formation of State Grand Councils, and threw off their allegiance to the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. I do not believe that charters were ever granted immediately and directly by the Supreme Council. I think that they were always issued in its name by its agents, who were empowered to do so by a general warrant. Thus I have been enabled to trace the original Councils of Alabama to the action of John Barker, who was an authorized agent of the Supreme Council. Perhaps more work was done in this way by Jeremy L. Cross, under the same claim, than by any other man in the United States.

Mackey goes on to state: “In this manner the control of these degrees has been gradually but permanently taken from the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, and they have now become a constituent part of what is beginning to be called the American Rite, to which, indeed, they properly belong, since they are absolutely necessary for the proper illustration of the Royal Arch Degree”. And, “The Inspectors-General of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, at least in the Southern Council, still claim, although they very seldom exercise it, the right to confer these degrees on qualified persons, and it can hardly be denied that Royal and Select Masters, so made, would be legal and regular. To doubt it would be to throw suspicion on the legality of every Council and every Select Master of the present day, since they derive their existence from founders originally made in this way by Inspectors-General. If the fountain is defiled, we can hardly expect that the streams that flow from it should be pure”.
“This connection of the degrees of Royal and Select Master with the Ancient and Accepted Rite will readily account for the resemblance which is found in these degrees, in phraseology and symbolism, to that Rite. Their legends, however, assimilate them more closely to the Royal Arch of the York and American Rites, than to the corresponding Knights of the Ninth Arch of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. Hence, in making them the eighth and ninth degrees of the American Rite, it must be admitted that Masonic ritualists have put them in the right place”.

It must be stated emphatically that not all the evidence and research elicited herein is beyond dispute by some noteworthy Masonic scholars and authors. Their arguments, however, are for another time and perhaps a subsequent review of the subject matter by the members of this Lodge. I will not grant recognition of their arguments here. I will, however, attempt to summarize what has been stated so far.

1) The term “Cryptic” was first used by Rob Morris, an influential Mason in the 1800s.
2) The Degrees of Cryptic Masonry are the Royal Master and Select Master. Their roots can be traced to the Rite of Perfection Degrees, and eventually traced to France. They are sometimes referred to as the Degrees of Preservation.
3) The Super Excellent Master Degree’s exact history is unknown. It was not listed as a side degree of European Masonry in a catalog of over 700 known degrees which was published in the nineteenth century. The earliest account of its conferral was on December 2nd, 1817when Columbian Council of Royal Masters in New York City opened a Lodge of Super Excellent Masters. In the ensuing years, a number of Councils conferred this degree, while other Councils strongly objected to it having a place in the Cryptic system. The degree is one of the most dramatic and impressive in all Freemasonry and is especially significant in that it is the only degree based directly upon the destruction of the Temple of Solomon. It is well placed within the York Rite system as it prepares the candidate historically for the Order of the Red Cross which immediately follows in the Commandery Orders. Some insist that while it is an extremely important degree, it is technically not a Cryptic degree.
4) Key figures in the Rite include Jeremy Ladd Cross, James Cushman, from Maine and Connecticut, who was a grand lecturer and established many Councils. John Barker, from South Carolina, a student of Cross who was active in establishing Councils; Philip Eckel, who hailed from Germany and gave Cross the authority to confer and spread the degrees.
5) The first meeting of the General Grand Council was held in Denver in 1883, after forming in 1880 and being ratified in 1881.

I would be remiss in my discussion of this subject if I did not include some brief history of Cryptic Masonry in Iowa.

When Royal Arch Masonry was introduced into Iowa, the Council Degrees were also introduced and conferred in the Chapters. When the action of the General Grand Chapter to abdicate authority over the Council Degrees was taken, measures were adopted to introduce the Council system. The Grand Master of the Grand Council of Illinois authorized several Iowa masons, among them an interesting man named Theodore S. Parvin, to heal Companions irregularly made in Chapters. He also granted dispensation for a Council in Iowa, to which the Grand Council of Illinois granted a charter on September 26th, 1856. He also granted a dispensation for a second Council, and it was extended to the session in 1856, when, a dispensation for a third Council having been issued, charters were granted to two Councils on October 1st, 1856. Delegates from these three Councils met January 2nd, 1857, and organized on that day the Grand Council of Iowa. It went on with apparent prosperity, increasing the number of its subordinates to nineteen, besides three in another jurisdiction, until 1878, when it consolidated with the Grand Chapter and in the language of the then Grand Recorder, “closed the record of the Grand Council of the State of Iowa for the present”.

It met twice in 1857. Its proceedings were published annually, except that those for 1859 and 1860 were published in one pamphlet, as well as those for 1865 and 1866. In 1872, a title page, introduction and index for a volume were published, and in 1878 a title page and introduction for a volume, embracing the whole proceedings, with an index from1873 to 1878 were also published. The proceedings of 1857, 1858, 1865, 1866, and 1869 have been reprinted. The Grand Council of Iowa, of course, is its own entity again but the historical interest of these actions should not be ignored.

As to the subject of Brother T.S. Parvin, the undersigned could devote several pages of this paper to his legacy and still not do him justice; however, this is a subject for another time, and, perhaps, another paper from a member of this Lodge. His legacy would be best served by someone more intimately familiar with the details of his life, and for the Masonic Award that bears his name. I am confident that there is at least one member of this Lodge who is qualified to write about him.

In closing, the undersigned would like to stress that certain details pertaining to ritual in these degrees have been intentionally omitted from this paper. Not knowing at the time of writing what Masons would be in attendance at its initial reading, the author must be cognizant of the fact that not all Masons have received the Council Degrees, and therefore, the cherished details of their secrets should not be disclosed here. I would state, however, that this paper should not only serve to enrich our knowledge of the history of these degrees, but to subject the uninitiated with a thirst to receive the same.

Respectfully submitted,

Kevin T. Christians
Junior Warden
Specialis Procer Lodge #678
Des Moines, Iowa

Presented October 29, 2010 at a Festive Board of the Lodge

Masonry in Turkey

2010-06-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

Presentation by Brother Levent Turkment =(Awaiting Copy)

What's A Penny Worth - By Brother Tim Whipple

2010-06-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Talk given at St. John The Baptist Festive Board - June 25, 2010

Last summer, on the way to Seattle for my sister's wedding, I stopped at a Montana gas station for coffee. The price was 99 cents. I paid with a dollar bill, and the clerk gave me my change: one shiny, new Lincoln penny.

This penny happened to be one of the special versions issued last year in commemoration of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. As shiny as it was, and being a design I'd never seen before, I paused a moment to admire it.

At which point, the clerk said: "Oh, sorry about that, that's one of those new pennies with less copper. Give it back, and I'll give you one of the old ones. They're worth more."

At first I was confused, but, as I quickly discerned, she was referring to the intrinsic value of the coin's metal. She obviously thought the value of a new penny was less than the value of an old one merely because of the copper content. Nonetheless, having no plans to melt down my pocket change, I was content with my "new" penny.

But she had raised a larger question in my mind:

What is a penny really worth, anyway?

Until that moment, I would have answered one cent, but it dawned on me that there might be more to it than that.

And as I thought about it, a second question also occurred to me:

Why is Lincoln's face on the penny?

And the more I thought about this second question, the more convinced I became that it held the key to answering the first question.

At one level, it's obvious why we would put Lincoln on our currency: In both surveys of historians and polls of the general public, he is routinely ranked as the greatest of all our presidents. But to understand why he's considered the greatest president, we must take a closer look at his accomplishments, and of all his many accomplishments, there are two that stand out: ending slavery and saving the union.

Considered alone, either of these accomplishments would have secured Lincoln's place in history, but to have done both is truly monumental. And, given their immense significance and cultural impact, we tend to talk about each accomplishment as if it were distinct from the other. But for Lincoln, as a practical matter, they were inextricably linked.

That is, he concluded, after long and careful deliberation, that freeing the slaves was the best way to save the union, and in fact, he ultimately decided that he could not do one without doing the other.

This, then, was the primary reason he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

In hindsight, with all the perspective of history, we see the proclamation as self-evidently the right thing to do, particularly from a moral standpoint. However, it seems to me that with the passage of time, we've lost sight of the practical difficulties of the proclamation, of its actual purposes, and of Lincoln's alternatives.

As its title indicates, the emancipation proclamation is a legal document that "freed the slaves," and thus for many people, it has come to symbolize the end of slavery in America. Yet the proclamation itself didn't abolish slavery. It was the 13th amendment that did that. Moreover, there are other details as well that tend to forget:

For example:

(1) Did you know that a proclamation was not Lincoln's preferred method of emancipation?

(2) Did you know that he actually issued two Emancipation Proclamations?

(3) Did you know that the proclamation didn't free every slave and that it wasn't intended to?

That the proclamation has nonetheless come to stand for the end of slavery in America represents merely a "face value" understanding of it. An understanding that isn't incorrect so much as it is incomplete. It leaves us with an impoverished appreciation for something profoundly valuable. If, however, we peel away the superficial and delve into its complexities, the proclamation's true value can be more richly appreciated.

But, in order to peel away this "face value" understanding, we need a tool, and, as is so often the case, Masonry provides us one.

In this case, that tool is the cardinal virtue of Fortitude. By examining the proclamation through the lens of fortitude, we can bring its complexities into sharper focus.

The first step is to better understand what fortitude is.

The dictionary lists "boldness, bravery, fearlessness, and valor" among the synonyms for fortitude. Some of these synonyms are better than others, depending on the context, but on the whole, they all convey a sense of courage, especially a prominent display of physical courage.

However, the Masonic definition of "fortitude" is more subtle and more complex:

"Fortitude is that noble and steady purpose of the mind whereby we are enabled to undergo any pain, peril, or danger, when prudentially deemed expedient. This virtue isequally distant from rashness and cowardice."

That definition reveals four aspects of fortitude which tend to differentiate it from "courage".

The first aspect is internal. Fortitude is a "noble and steady purpose of the mind." In other words, there is more to it than mere "physical bravery." It is a product of the brain, not the guts. It is marked by careful, deliberate, and "steady" attention to a course of action. It is not random or hasty. It requires a clearly defined goal, or "purpose" that is sufficient to motivate action. This purpose should also be lofty or illustrious; it should be "noble." In the context of public office, an act of fortitude will likely be of significant benefit to the public.

The second aspect is external. There must be "a sense of jeopardy" or "a threat." Such a threat may be physical, of course, but it may also be nonphysical. That is, the threat could be "pain," but more generically, it could be "peril" or "danger". In the context of public office, the threat might well be an impending societal, political, or governmental crisis, especially one that could harm public welfare. The more people whose welfare is affected, the more is at stake. The essential element is not what form the threat takes, but what is at risk.

The third aspect is analytical. Fortitude incorporates a reasoning process that culminates in an exercise of judgment. That's the essence of "a prudential deeming of expedience". "Prudence" is wisdom or caution in regard to practical affairs, including the careful consideration of the potential consequences, good and bad, of a course of action. To "deem" means to judge or to think. To be "expedient" means that something is the most appropriate course of action under the circumstances. Thus, "a prudential deeming of expedience" simply means carefully assessing a situation, evaluating the options, and deciding which one is most likely to work.

Notice that the first two aspects create a foundation for the third. When facing pain, peril, or danger, fortitude demands that the likelihood of achieving a noble purpose should be sufficient to justify taking a risky course of action. To do that, you must weigh the probabilities of the risks against the probabilities of the benefits, and make a judgment as to whether a course of action is worth attempting.

To put it another way, the first three aspects together describe a process that is very much like a "risk/benefit analysis."

The fourth and final aspect is philosophical. Fortitude is illuminated for us by a description of what it is not. To say that fortitude is "equally distant from rashness and cowardice" is to say that heedlessly courting danger is no more an example of fortitude than is turning tail and running.

Described in this manner, fortitude has a classical sense of proportion or balance. In the philosophy of Aristotle, every virtue exists as the middle point between two vices: one a vice of excess and the other a vice of deficiency. Philosophers refer to this concept in distinctly mathematical terms as "the mean between the extremes," or, The Golden Mean.

In the case of fortitude, the vice of excess is rashness and the vice of deficiency is cowardice. When you are exhibiting fortitude, your actions will be in harmony. They will be neither reckless nor craven. Rather, they will be at a point of equipoise, balanced perfectly between the two vices.

So, with a working knowledge of fortitude in hand, let us apply these four aspects to the complexities of the emancipation proclamation.

The first question is what Lincoln's noble and steady purpose was.

Despite being remembered today as the Great Emancipator, Lincoln's ultimate purpose, even when issuing the proclamation, was not the abolition of slavery. And Lincoln himself consistently said as much.

For example, in his first inaugural address to the nation, before the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln unequivocally proclaimed the following:

I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

If that statement seems out of keeping with the popular mythos of the Great Emancipator, consider that on more than one occasion prior to the emancipation proclamation, when Union generals had issued military proclamations affecting the legal status of slaves, Lincoln had either modified or rescinded their actions.

The most prominent instance was in May of 1862, just a few weeks before he himself would begin drafting his own proclamation. General David Hunter, the Union commander in the states of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, had declared all slaves in those states "forever free," but Lincoln immediately invalidated Hunter's proclamation.

If his primary purpose had been the abolition of slavery, why did Lincoln cancel Hunter's action? Indeed, why hadn't he issued his own proclamation soon after taking office, as some abolitionists wanted him to do?

It may be hard today to understand his reticence, and in fact it was hard for many of his supporters even at the time, but Lincoln had sound practical reasons for not acting precipitously.

For one thing, Lincoln believed that his generals lacked the legal authority to emancipate slaves. Lincoln, a lawyer by trade, was ever mindful that the Supreme Court had a pro-slavery majority, and he believed that military emancipation was likely to be overturned.

For another, Lincoln always maintained a sharp distinction between his personal convictions and his official duties. His position on secession was that it was plainly illegal and that the Confederacy was therefore not a sovereign nation but a collection of American citizens in armed rebellion against their rightful government. Thus, while he was personally opposed to slavery, he steadfastly maintained that his oath of office required consideration for the welfare of all Americans, including the rebelling Southerners.

Lincoln's view of official duty wasn't contradictory to his beliefs about slavery and it wasn't naive. It was a noble recognition of every citizen's rights, and, given the widespread notion of white superiority even among the opponents of slavery, it was also intensely practical. In his famous debates against Stephen Douglas, Lincoln had once said:

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.

He truly believed that saving the Union benefited everyone and that it was the one goal upon which he could build the political consensus necessary to support his government. Abolition, on the other hand, was too polarizing.

Some might call this cold and calculating, even dehumanizing, but it was essentially pragmatic. After all, Lincoln was not a dictator. Not only did he have to win re-election, in order to govern the country, he also had to get legislation through Congress. Without adequate political support, he could not have won the war, and ultimately, if he couldn't win the war, he could not have freed the slaves, by proclamation or otherwise.

In a supremely logical and concise letter to the abolitionist publisher Horace Greeley dated August 22, 1862, Lincoln wrote:

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing", as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was."

If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. [...]

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

In other words, if we are to take Honest Abe at his word, his primary purpose all along was the preservation of the Union and not the abolition of slavery. Not only that, but he was expressly willing to free some slaves, but not others, and in fact, as I will discuss in a moment, that isprecisely what the proclamation did.

However, before examining the legal aspects of the proclamation, we should consider the second aspect of fortitude because an understanding of the risks associated with emancipation is crucial to understanding the specific provisions Lincoln eventually included.

Today, we usually talk about the Civil War in rigidly simplistic terms: North and South; Freedom and Slavery; Winning and Losing. But the politics of the time were considerably more dynamic than that, particularly early in the war.

After Lincoln won the election in 1860, eleven Southern states voted to secede from the Union and form the Confederacy. However, not every slave state joined them. The "border states" of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky despite also being slave states, chose to remain in the Union.

Lincoln, despite being born in Kentucky, was not popular in these border states. He had won the election with just 39% of the national vote and had lost all of the border states. Many people in the border states, believing that Lincoln was an abolitionist, mistrusted him, and Lincoln feared that if he moved too swiftly against slavery, the border states would secede and join the Confederacy.

If that happened, the South's war-making capacity would have been significantly enhanced, and could have tipped the balance toward the Confederacy. It has been estimated that, if the three states of Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky had seceded, the Confederacy would have increased its supply of horses and mules by 40%, its white population by 45%, and its manufacturing capacity by 80%. Not only that, but whoever controlled Kentucky controlled hundreds of miles of inland waterways and railroads that were vital for the resupply of the armies fighting in the nation's interior.McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p 284.

All of which, Lincoln was keenly aware of. He summarized the danger this way in an 1861 letter to Illinois Senator Orville Browning:

I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone we could not hold Missouri; nor, as I think Maryland.

But the risk of losing the border states was not the only danger. He also had to worry about alienating his own supporters. Northern abolitionists constituted the most important part of his political coalition, and they were demanding an end to slavery. If he took no action against slavery, Lincoln risked alienating them every bit as much as he risked alienating the border states if he pushed too hard for emancipation.

Thus, from a political standpoint, the legal status of slavery had to be dealt with very carefully. Eventually, Lincoln knew, he would have to take some action against slavery, but when he did so, he must not cause the border states to secede.

As impossible as this dilemma sounds, Lincoln believed he had the solution. Since slavery, as an institution, was controlled by the states, it was within their power to prohibit it, as the Northern states had already done. Thus, Lincoln sought to convince the remaining slave states to end slavery at the state level.

To Lincoln, this was a far better option, both legally and politically, than a presidential proclamation, a military proclamation, or even a federal statute, all of which risked invalidation by the courts.

In fact, Lincoln was so committed to this approach that he proposed to compensate slave states at the rate of $300 per slave if they would embrace voluntary emancipation. Moreover, this proposal was offered to all of the slave states, although Lincoln was particularly hopeful that it would appeal to the border states.

Unfortunately, the proposal failed. Northerners didn't want their taxes used to buy slaves, Southerners didn't want slavery to end, and the border states wouldn't sell at such a low price. Nevertheless, throughout the spring and summer of 1862, Lincoln continued to hold out hope for this plan.

On July 12, 1862, he sent a letter to the Congressional delegations from the border states, urging them to take the money while they had the chance. He wrote:

The incidents of the war can not be avoided. If the war continue long, [...], the institution [of slavery] in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion–by the mere incidents of the war.

It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already.

How much better for you, and for your people, to take the step which, at once, shortens the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event.

How much better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the war.

How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it.

How much better for you, as seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out, and buy out [the property] without which the war could never have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold, and the price of it, in cutting one another's throats.

As that passage indicates, Lincoln thought that spending billions of dollars to end slavery peacefully was a far better value than spending billions to fight a long and bloody war to end it.

Moreover, Lincoln pursued this idea even though it was delaying action against slavery and alienating his own party. General Hunter's proclamation had been popular with Northern abolitionists, and, later in his letter to the border states, Lincoln admitted how politically difficult it had been for him to rescind it. He wrote:

I am pressed with a difficulty not yet mentioned–[...] An instance of it is known to you.

Gen. Hunter is an honest man. He was, and I hope, still is, my friend. I valued him none the less for his agreeing with me in the general wish that all men everywhere, could be free. He proclaimed all men free within certain states, and I repudiated the proclamation.

He expected more good, and less harm from the measure, than I could believe would follow.

Yet in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offence, to many whose support the country can not afford to lose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure, in this direction, is still upon me, and is increasing.

Notice in that passage, that while Lincoln supported the basic morality of Hunter's proclamation, he repudiated it anyway, and the reason he gave for doing so was that, in his judgment, it would have done more harm than good. He had, in other words, weighed the benefits of Hunter's proclamation against its risks, and concluded that it was neither prudential nor expedient.

Which brings us to the third aspect of fortitude, the reasoning process that culminates in an exercise of judgment.

Hunter issued his proclamation on May 9, 1862, and Lincoln invalidated it on May 19. Yet it is known that Lincoln first broached the subject of a presidential proclamation with his cabinet on July 13, 1862. So, why, if Lincoln thought in May that Hunter's proclamation would do more harm than good, did he begin drafting his own proclamation just weeks later? The answer to that question has everything to do with expediency.

Because the political risks of emancipation were so great, the means of achieving it had to be the one most likely to succeed, and Lincoln was convinced that Hunter's proclamation wasn't going to work.

For one thing, Hunter was unlikely to be upheld by the courts. Lincoln himself was supportive of emancipation, but if a hastily issued proclamation were overturned, it would have amounted to little more than an empty gesture, and Lincoln wasn't interested in an empty gesture, even if it had a political upside. He was interested in the actual, tangible benefits of emancipation.

For another thing, Hunter's proclamation was too limited: it applied to Union controlled areas in just three Southern states, meaning that even if it were upheld, it would not have weakened the Southern war effort enough to justify the risks.

Yet, despite his dim view of Hunter's proclamation, Lincoln did think it was possible to craft a successful proclamation, and when he began work on his own, he took care to address two overriding imperatives. First, he needed a sound legal basis to withstand a court challenge. Second, he needed to minimize the political risks as much as possible.

Identifying the best legal basis for the proclamation was by far the easier task. While he believed that Hunter had lacked the authority to permanently emancipate slaves, Lincoln felt that, as President, he could justify it.

Typically, executive orders are issued under the authority of a law passed by Congress, which is a textbook example of how power is distributed between the branches of our government: Congress makes the laws and the president sees that they are faithfully executed.

However, the greatest Constitutional debate of the Antebellum Era had been whether or not Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in the territorial areas controlled by the Federal government. The resounding answer from the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case was that Congress did not have such power. The upshot of this is that the issue of whether Congress had the power to end slavery by statute was largely beyond question. Virtually everyone agreed that because the Constitution allowed slavery, only a Constitutional amendment could end it.

Thus, the problem for Lincoln was that if Congress itself couldn't pass a law ending slavery, then what legal basis would support his taking independent action against it?

The answer, of course, is that the President has some powers that flow directly from the Constitution. If Lincoln could legitimately use one of these powers, his proclamation would be entitled to the same Constitutional weight as slavery itself, and it would, therefore, stand a better chance in court.

Foremost among Lincoln's constitutional powers was his authority as commander-in-chief, and the more he thought about the economic and logistical realities of waging the war, the more Lincoln began to see slavery as fundamental to the South's war efforts. This made emancipation increasingly necessary as a military response to the crisis, and if so, arguably within the scope of Lincoln's independent constitutional authority.

Fortunately for history, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, recorded in his diary the momentous conversation between himself, Lincoln, and Secretary of State William Seward in which this option was first discussed.

This conversation, which took place on July 13, 1862, just one day after his letter to the border states, reveals Lincoln's evolving thoughts on the military necessity of emancipation.

Here's how Welles described it:

It was on this occasion [...] that [President Lincoln] first mentioned to Mr. Seward and myself the subject of emancipating the slaves by proclamation[...]

He dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance, and delicacy of the movement, said he had given it much thought and had about come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued. [...]

Mr. Seward said the subject involved consequences so vast and momentous that he should wish to bestow on it mature reflection before giving a decisive answer, but his present opinion inclined to the measure as justifiable, and perhaps, he might say, expedient and necessary.

Despite the soundness of these arguments, the proclamation clearly represented an exercise of Presidential authority that was without precedent. If it were challenged, the crucial question would be whether it was truly a military necessity. The answer to that question lies in the economic importance of slavery.

The Southern economy was based on commodity agriculture production and export, particularly cotton. In 1860, the South was still an agrarian, pre-Industrial society, in which slavery was not just the primary system of labor but also the primary vehicle for capital investment. As the economic importance of cotton grew, more and more Southern wealth was invested in land and slaves instead of ships and factories.

To get a sense of the economic importance of slavery, consider the following:

In 1860, there were about 4 million slaves in America. For comparison, in all 11 states of the Confederacy, there was just 9 million people.http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm
The total amount of capital invested in slaves was approximately $3.5 billion.http://oyc.yale.edu/history/civil-war-and-reconstruction/content/transcripts/transcript-2-southern-society-slavery-king-cotton For comparison, the total amount spent on the war, by both governments combined, was just $3.3 billion.http://oyc.yale.edu/history/civil-war-and-reconstruction/content/transcripts/transcript-2-southern-society-slavery-king-cotton
The average value of a slave was approximately $875. For comparison, an acre of territorial land could be purchased from the federal government for just $1.25.http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/
The gross domestic product of the United States in 1860 was just $4.35 billion. Thus, the $3.5 billion invested in slaves represented approximately 80% of the nation's GDP. For comparison, the GDP of the United States in 2009 was $14.2 trillion. If slavery existed today, at 80% of GDP, there would be $11 trillion invested in slaves.http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

In addition, slave labor enabled a very high percentage of Southern whites to serve in the military. Four out of every five eligible Southern men fought in the war.http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/rthg/chap6.htm That would have been impossible without slave labor propping up the economy.

In other words, when Seward pointed out that emancipation involved "vast and momentous" consequences, he was not exaggerating. From an economic perspective, emancipation had the potential to wipe out most of the South's wealth and productive capacity in a single blow. With its economy crippled, the South would not be able to continue the struggle. Which is ultimately why military necessity was the best legal argument supporting the proclamation.

But even the strongest legal basis would not forestall the political fallout if emancipation was clumsily handled. Which brings us to Lincoln's second imperative: minimizing the political risk.

The proclamation itselfhttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation includes three largely forgotten legal provisions designed to do that.

First, even though Lincoln issued his proclamation on September 22, 1862, he delayed its effect until the issuance of a second proclamation on January 1, 1863. Thus, even though we now refer to "the" emancipation proclamation, it was actually two proclamations, issued in conjunction 100 days apart.

Second, Lincoln actually made emancipation conditional. The first proclamation states that only those slaves "within any State, or designated part of a State" in which the people were actively "in rebellion against the United States" when he issued his second proclamation would be freed. This meant that as many as half a million slaves in the border states, which had never seceded, would not be freed, and it also meant that even the Confederate states could avoid emancipation if they stopped fighting and rejoined the Union before the second proclamation was issued.

Thus, the first proclamation was essentially an ultimatum to the South in which Lincoln said: "In 100 days, I'm going to free your slaves, unless you lay down your arms and rejoin the Union." It was only when the second proclamation was issued that any slaves were actually freed.

The third provision was a renewal of the offer of compensated emancipation, demonstrating that even while threatening emancipation, Lincoln was still willing to reimburse the South if only it would end slavery voluntarily. Thus, the three provisions together represented a carrot and stick approach to the issue of emancipation.

In in the end, the expediency of the proclamation depended on how well Lincoln addressed the legal and political problems posed by emancipation. The diffifult decision wasn't whether to pursue emancipation, it was identifying the most prudent means of achieving it. By examining these problems, we discover the fine line that Lincoln was walking:

He was shoring up his own political support by freeing millions of slaves, yet he was also placating the border states by exempting them.

He was trying to win the war by striking at the heart of the Southern economy, yet he was also holding out for a peaceful end to the conflict.
He was vastly expanding the powers of the presidency, yet he was adhering cautiously to what could be justified by military necessity.
And in all of these things, he was demonstrating that his primary purpose was the preservation of the Union.

In so many ways, then, the proclamation exemplifies what it means to act in balance and proportion.

Which brings us to the final aspect of fortitude which describes it as being equally distant from rashness and cowardice. If the proclamation represents an act of fortitude, then we should be able to identify alternative courses of action that would have been either rash or cowardly.

It's tempting, once the details of the proclamation are better understood, to condemn Lincoln for not freeing all of the nation's slaves. The injustice of that is self-evident. Moreover, there is something deeply ironic about exempting the border states. William Seward once said of the proclamation that:

We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.

But had Lincoln included the border states in the proclamation, he would have overreached his Constitutional authority. Moreover, doing so may very well have pushed the border states into the Confederacy and resulted in Southern independence. Nothing could have been more rash than that!

Another option, of course, was not to issue the proclamation at all. The North had a much greater population and a vastly larger industrial base. Many people viewed a Northern victory as inevitable, but that ignores the political risks of inaction.

Given the importance of slavery to the Southern war effort, the longer Lincoln waited to move against slavery, the longer it would take to achieve a military victory. And, the longer the war dragged on, the less political support his government enjoyed. Lincoln had to show substantial progress against the rebellion and he had to do it before the 1864 elections. Thus, not to have pursued every feasible option for ending the war would have been a cowardly neglect of his duties.

The risks were real, however, and Lincoln delayed the proclamation as long as he could, but he knew that eventually, he had to issue it. When he did, although he wasn't guaranteed of the outcome, he was confident he had done all he could to ensure its success.

Near the end of the war, he assessed his actions this way:

When, in March, and May, and July 1862, I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation...would come, unless averted by that measure.

They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident.

More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, -- no loss by it any how or any where.

Frederick Douglass also judged Lincoln a success. In an 1876 speech, Douglass appraised him this way:

His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery.

To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless.

Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

As that passage indicates, Frederick Douglass believed that Lincoln's virtues could indeed be found at the mean between the extremes.

In the end, though, how does examining Lincoln's fortitude help us determine what a penny is worth?

Well, it seems to me that once you've examined something as complex as the emancipation proclamation and can draw out its lessons, you can apply them to other things as well.

Among the lessons to be learned from Lincoln, for example, is how to identify benefits, assess risks, and make judgments about probabilities. The ability to do those things is intimately connected to understanding what's easy, what's difficult, and what doesn't happen very often.

To put it another way, when you truly understand fortitude, you are well-qualified to make a practical assessment of something's value, even something that seems simple on its face.

Consider, then, the penny.

If you look only at its face value, you will agree that a penny is worth a mere one cent.

But if you look again, as that Montana gas station clerk had, you realize that a penny hasintrinsic value. Pennies minted between 1909 and 1982, for example, are 95% copper, and thus have a scrap metal value of approximately 2 cents.http://www.coinflation.com/

And if you look again, you realize that the penny has a time value. It takes 27 cents today to buy what a single penny bought in 1860.http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ Who knows how much today's penny will purchase in a hundred years.

And if you look again, you realize that a rare or collectible penny has a market value. In 1969, for example, the US mint erroneously produced a handful of pennies on which there was a doubling of the image on the "heads" side of the coin. These rare coins can be worth as much as $35,000 today.http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/tp/errorvarieties.htm

And if you look yet again, you realize that the penny has a utility value. No other coin in circulation today adds up to 1 cent. It is unique within our currency system. There are those who advocate for the elimination of pennies since it now costs almost two cents to mint each one.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_eliminate_the_penny_in_the_United_States Yet, in a very real sense, the penny is invaluable. It is the most widely circulated coin in the country for a reason: Whether you need to make 6 cents or 26 cents in change, you're going to need the penny. It's hard, in other words, to imagine our nation penniless!

And if you look one last time, you realize that the penny has symbolic value. In 1793, the U.S. mint produced the first circulating coin in American history: a 100% copper coin worth one cent. It's been with us ever since.

Over the years, its design has changed, but no matter what's been on the face, the penny has been a symbol: of freedom, of unity, of commerce, and even of luck. But no matter what it symbolizes, the virtue of the penny is that we appreciate it not for its intrinsic worth or value alone but also for what it means to us.

To me, the penny will always be a memorial. It reminds me, not just of the emancipation proclamation itself, but of the lesson it teaches: that the essence of fortitude is doing as much for the relief of others as is reasonably possible without failing. And so, as long as Lincoln's face is on the penny, whenever I see one, I will appreciate the value of fortitude.

__________________________________________________________________________

1. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p 284.

2. http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm

3. http://oyc.yale.edu/history/civil-war-and-reconstruction/content/transcripts/

transcript-2-southern-society-slavery-king-cotton

4. http://oyc.yale.edu/history/civil-war-and-reconstruction/content/transcripts/

transcript-2-southern-society-slavery-king-cotton

5. http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

6. http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

7. http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/rthg/chap6.htm

8. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

9. http://www.coinflation.com/

10. http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

11. http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/tp/errorvarieties.htm

12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_eliminate_the_penny_in_the_United_States

A WALK THROUGH THE MIDDLE CHAMBER

2010-02-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

Presented by Wade Sheeler - February 20, 2010

1. Who is considered to be the founder of the Middle Chamber Lecture?

William Preston is often credited with being the individual who first put to writing the Middle Chamber Lecture. Preston was born on July 28, 1842 in Edinburgh, Scotland and died on April 1,1818 in London. In 1762, Preston became the second initiate of the Ancient Grand Lodge of England #111. In 1772, Preston published “Illustrations of Masonry” which was the first attempt at standardization of Masonic ritual.

In Preston’s day, it was highly unusual for a man to be educated beyond grammar school. Preston saw the Middle Chamber Lecture as a means of giving a man a rudimentary formal education in the liberal arts and sciences. In the 17th century conception of a liberal education consisted of study in grammar, rhetoric, and logic (called the “tritium”) and arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (called the “quadrivium”). Although Preston is considered to be the “father” of the Middle Chamber Lecture, some of the components of this lecture can be traced back to the Gothic Constitutions several centuries before Preston’s time. Preston’s Middle Chamber Lecture actually was comprised of 36 steps (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 steps). This was later changed to 25 steps in the English system. The American System is comprised of 15 steps.

2. What does the Winding Staircase as a whole symbolize?

The staircase as a whole symbolizes the stages of life: youth, manhood, and age. The staircase is divided into three distinct sections, composed of steps of three, five, and seven. Each of these numbers have special meanings within Masonry. The several steps symbolize the slow, arduous task of building the edifice of a Mason’s character, the development of his self-discipline, and his deepening relationship with God. The staircase symbolizes not only life for the individual Mason, but also life within the walls of the lodge and the world without: of studying, learning, enlarging mental horizons and increasing our spiritual outlooks.

3. What is the significance of the stairs being winding as opposed to being straight?

The one virtue which most distinguishes man from other creatures is courage. It requires more courage to face the unknown as opposed to the known. A straight ladder hides neither secret nor mystery. The stairs that wind hide each step from the climber, what is just around the next corner is unknown. The Winding Stairs of life lead us to what we know not, a Middle Chamber of fame and fortune for some, for others pain and misery. The Angel of Death may stand on the very next step. Through ignorance, darkness, misery, cruelty, wrong, oppression, danger, and despair, man has climbed to enlightenment. Man climbs because he has courage. The winding stairs do lead somewhere. There is a Middle Chamber. There are wages of a Fellowcraft to be earned. Believing and being unafraid, the Fellowcraft climbs in the hope at the top of his winding staircase to reach a Middle Chamber and see a new sign in the East.

4. What are the two types of Masonry?

Operative – Freemasons in the operative period were skilled workmen engaged in some branch of the building arts. They had an organized “guild”. A lodge was a local component of the “guild” and had its own officers, law, rules, regulations, and customs which were binding on all members. These lodges were often temporary during the completion of a given project.

Membership was divided into two classes: apprentices and fellowcrafts. Apprentices were generally young boys of between 12 and 15. When a boy was found to be acceptable to the members he was required to swear to be teachable and obedient. He was then turned over to a senior Mason for instruction. Generally they toiled with no pay other than board, lodging, and clothing. He usually toiled for a period of 7 years, essentially serving as a bond servant, with many duties, but few rights and privileges.

Speculative – the 18th century was known as the Age of Reason or Age of Enlightenment. In England, this was a period of many new ideas, methods, and rediscovery of ideas from the ancient classical world. Scientific investigation and learning became the leading activities of men of learning during this time period. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 to promote “Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning”. The Rev. Dr. John T. Desaguliers, the father of modern speculative Freemasonry and the third Grand Master of the Premier Lodge in London was a member. The studies and experiments of the men that made up the Royal Society were referred to as “speculation”…they were “speculative” men. They sought, examined, contemplated, and mediated on new facts or knowledge by experimenting with what was already known. Freemasonry therefore originally meant an “experimental” search for Light or Truth.

That characteristic was the new element which made the Fraternity different from operative Masonry. Brotherly love, moral training, and relief had always been an important part of the lodges of operative craftsman. Freemasonry in the 18th century placed its greatest emphasis on “experimental philosophy” and knowledge of the Truth to which all learning leads.

5. What are the names of the two brazen pillars and what do they symbolize?

Jachin (on the right) – represents establishment. Represented the pillar of cloud.
Boaz (on the left) – represents strength. Represented the pillar of fire.

The pillars of cloud and fire are mentioned in Exodus 13:21…the pillars of cloud and fire were used by God to lead the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt.

The pillars are also said to have represented power and control. Power (strength) without control (establishment) is anarchy. Control without power is futility.

The pillars were cast by Hiram, who was an expert worker in brass from Tyre. Hiram’s mother was a widow from the Tribe of Naphtali. The Bible makes no specific mention of “Hiram Abiff”. The pillars were cast in the clay ground of the Jordan, between Succoth and Zarthan.

In 1 Kings 7:15…”For he cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits (27 feet) high apiece…And he made two chapiters of molten brass to set upon the tops of the pillars; the height one chapiter was five cubits (7 ft. 6 inches).

The pillars were adorned with chapiters of pomengrate, lilywork, and network. The pillars themselves were 18 cubits in height and the chapiters five cubits in height. The Hebrews used a cubit as a unit of measurement. It was said to be the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger (approximately 18 inches). The pillars and chapiters were thus approximately 35 feet in height. The term “chapiter” in architecture refers to the head or top of a column.

6. What are the symbolism of the lily work, network, and pomegranate?

Symbolically they represented peace, unity, and exuberance which were enjoyed by the Israelites after their delivery from bondage in Egypt. Masonically they teach us that Masons should live in peace and unity and give of our plenty to those who are worthy, but less fortunate than ourselves.

7. What is the significance of the globes?

The globes were not set a top the pillars that adorned the porch of King Solomon’s Temple. The Biblical description in I Kings, chapter 7 (verse 20) refers to a “belly” and to a “bowl” in verse 41. This apparently led to the conception of a globe. The two globes were undoubtedly introduced into the lodge in the mid 1700s, there being no trace of them before that. They were representations of the earth and sky and were often made of either glass or silver and kept in racks on the floor. They were used to illustrate the universality of Masonry. Someone apparently suggested that they be placed on the top of the pillars. Preston saw the globes as aides to assist in teaching men the sciences of geography and astronomy.

8. What lies between the pillars?

A checkered path consisting of white and black tiles represents the mosaic pavement discussed in the first degree. It represents good and evil, prosperity and adversity, light and dark.

9. What do the three steps represent?
a. the three principal officers of the lodge
b. Deity – the triangle consisting of three straight lines. Equilateral triangle was considered a symbol of Deity by the Ancients.
c. The three degrees
d. The three Great Lights of Masonry ---Holy Bible, Square, and Compass
e. The three Lesser Lights of Masonry---Sun, Moon, and Master of the Lodge
f. Three stages of life: youth, manhood, and age
g. Three jewels of a Fellowcraft-attentive ear, instructive tongue, and faithful breast
h. Wages of a Fellowcraft –corn, wine and oil
i. Working Tools of a Fellowcraft – plumb, square, and level
j. Three distinct natures of man – physical, mental, and spiritual
k. Three supports of a lodge – Wisdom, strength, and beauty
l. Three golden tenants – Brotherly love, relief, and truth
m. The perfect trinity of the home – father, mother, and child
n. The three distinct natures of man – physical, mental, and moral

10. What do the five steps represent?

a. Five Orders of Architecture: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite
b. Five Senses of Human Nature – Hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, and tasting
c. Five are required to hold a Fellowcrafts’ lodge
d. Geometry is the fifth science
e. Blazing Star (1st degree) – five points
f. Sublime Degree – five points of fellowship

The Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian were invented by the Greeks while the Tuscan and Composite were invented by the Romans. The Corinthian represents Beauty and is represented by the Junior Warden; the Doric represents strength and is represented by the Senior Warden, and the Ionic combines symbolizes wisdom which is a combination of beauty and strength and is represented by the Worshipful Master.

Freemasonry is concerned less with what order of architecture a Fellowcraft uses to build , than that he does choose one and not build aimlessly. The Fellowcraft’s five steps glorify the five senses of human nature because Freemasonry provides for a well rounded life which recognizes the physical as well as the mental and knows that only through the physical do we perceive the spiritual.

11. What do the seven steps represent?

In the ancient religions, the number seven had deep significance. Pythagoreans referred to it as the perfect number because it is made up and three and four, the two perfect figures—the triangle and the square. It was the virgin number because it can not by multiplication produce any numbers within ten. Nor can it be produced by the multiplication of any whole numbers.

Our ancient ancestors knew seven planets, seven Pleaides (the seven stars within the head of the constellation Taurus), seven Hyades (the five daughters of Atlas and sisters of the Pleiades, placed by Zeus among the stars), seven lights burned before the Altar of Mithras,the Goths had seven Deities; (Sun, Moon, Tuisco, Woden, Thor, Friga and Seatur or Saturn from which we derive the names of the seven days of the week). In the Gothic mysteries the candidate met with seven obstructions; the ancient Jews swore by seven because seven witnesses were used to confirm and seven sacrifices offered to truth. The Sabbath is the seventh day, Noah had seven days notice of the flood; God created the heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh, the walls of Jericho were encompassed seven times by seven priests bearing seven rams’ horns; the Temple was seven years in building and numerous other analogies.

The seventeenth century conception of a liberal education was composed of study in Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and astronomy. Preston endeavored to compress into his Middle Chamber Lecture enough of the seventeenth century conception of a liberal education to at least make available to a man at least of an outline of the seven liberal arts and sciences of the day.

The following quote is worthy of note:

“William Preston, who put so practical an interpretation upon these steps, lived in an age when these did indeed represent all knowledge. We must not refuse to grow because the ritual has not grown with modern discovery. When we rise by Grammar and Rhetoric, we must consider that they mean not only language, but all methods of communication. The step of Logic means a knowledge not only of a method of reasoning which logicians have accomplished. When we ascend by Arithmetic and Geometry we must visualize all science; since science is but measurement, in the true mathematical sense, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to read into these two steps all the science may teach. The step dominated by Music means not only sweet and harmonious sounds, but all beauty, poetry, art, nature and loveliness of all kind. As for the seventh step of Astronomy, surely it means not only a study of the solar system and the stars as it did in Preston’s day, but also a study of all that is beyond earth; of spirit and the world of sprit, of ethics, philosophy, the abstract of Deity. Preston’s seven steps are both logical in arrangement and suggestive in their order. The true Fellowcraft must see in them a guide to making a man rich in mind and spirit, but which riches only can the truest brotherhood be practiced.”

(source: www.masonicworld.com/Education/winding_stairs)

12. Who was Jephthah?

He is mentioned in the Book of Judges (chapter 12). He lived in Gilead and served as judge over Israel for a period of 6 years. He was a member of the Tribe of Manasseh (one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel). The Tribe of Manasseh and the Tribe of Ephraim formed the House of Joseph. Jephthah lived in Gilead and led the Israelites in the battle against Ammon.

13. Where was Gilead?

Gilead was a mountainous region east of the Jordan River, situated in the Kingdom of Jordan. Biblically speaking “Gilead” means a “hill of testimony or mound of witnesses”.

14. Who were the Ephraimites?

Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes after about 1200 BCE[1], Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes. The territory allocated to the Tribe of Ephraim was at the center of Canaan, west of the Jordan, south of the territory of Manasseh, and north of the Tribe of Benjamin. The region was later named Samaria (as distinguished from Judea or Galilee) mostly consisted of Ephraim's territory. The area was mountainous, giving it protection, but also highly fertile, giving prosperity. The tribe consisted of descendents of Ephraim, the son of Joseph. Territorial disputes were common between the Tribe of Manasseh and the Ephraimites.

15. Where was Ammon and who were the Ammonites?

Ammon was located east of the Jordan River, Gilead, and the Dead Sea. The chief city of the country was Rabbah or Rabbah Ammon, site of the modern city of Amman, Jordan.
According to the biblical account, Genesis 19:37-38, both Ammon and Moab were born of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his two daughters in the aftermath of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Bible refers to both the Ammonites and Moabites as the "children of Lot". Throughout the Bible, the Ammonites and Israelites are portrayed as antagonists. During the Exodus, the Israelites were prohibited by the Ammonites from passing through their lands.[4] In the Book of Judges, the Ammonites work with Eglon, king of the Moabites against Israel. Attacks by the Ammonites on Israelite communities east of the Jordan were the impetus behind the unification of the tribes under Saul.[5]
16. What is the meaning behind the word “Shibboleth”?
It is any distinguishing feature which is reflective of one’s social or geographic origin. It usually refers to language and particularly to a word which either identifies an individual as belonging to a distinct group or not belonging.

The term originates from the Hebrew word "shibbólet" (_________), which literally means the part of a plant containing grains, such as an ear of corn or a stalk of grain[3] or, in different contexts, "stream, torrent".[4][5] It derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect lacked a /_/ sound (as in shoe), from Gileadites whose dialect did include such a sound.

In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the Jordan River back into their home territory and the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. In order to identify and kill these refugees, the Gileadites put each refugee to a simple test:
“ Gilead then cut Ephraim off from the fords of the Jordan, and whenever Ephraimite fugitives said, 'Let me cross,' the men of Gilead would ask, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he said, 'No,' they then said, 'Very well, say Shibboleth.' If anyone said, 'Sibboleth', because he could not pronounce it, then they would seize him and kill him by the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites fell on this occasion. (see Judges 12:6). ”
*(source for #14-16, www.wikipedia.org)

17. What are the “Wages of a Fellowcraft”?

Corn, wine, and oil are the symbolic wages earned by a Fellowcraft who arrives at the Middle Chamber. These symbolize wealth in mental and spiritual worlds. Corn represents nourishment and the sustenance of life. It also symbolizes plenty and refers to the opportunity to do good, to work for the community, and for the performance of service to mankind. The corn referred to in the Fellowcraft degree is actually what we call wheat.
Wine is symbolic of refreshment, health, spirituality, and peace. Oil represents joy, gladness, and happiness. Taken together, corn wine, and oil represent the temporal rewards of a well lived life.
Corn has also represented the concept of resurrection. Wine has symbolized mystical attainments. Oil is one of the elements of consecration.

18. What is the Masonic Significance of the Letter “G”?

Why the letter “G” occupies such a place of prominence in Masonic lodges is an enigma to many Masonic researchers. Like the sphinx that sits before the pyramids, the letter “G” stands before us in silence and mystery. It is not consistently displayed throughout the Masonic world. We are told in this degree that it is the initial of Geometry as well as the initial of the name of Deity. From the time of the “Old Charges” to the present, the synonymous nature of Geometry and Masonry is clearly stated.

Some may question why Geometry is given such a prominent place in our fraternity. One might also observe that the word “God” is not a name per se, but is a category of being. The name of the Supreme Being depends on what tradition a person follows and it would not be incorrect to say that the name of the Supreme Being can not be known.

The Egyptians were well skilled at surveying because the annual flooding of the Nile destroyed boundary markers in their fields. They had to set out and calculate new boundaries each year. The Greeks named this skill Geometry or “earth measurement”. The Greeks made the advancement of deductive logic to expand the knowledge into a theoretical science. Pythagoras is credited with this achievement. This actually set the framework of the development of sciences. We may consider Geometry as the first science.

Pythagoras and later Plato raised Geometry to a sacred science of discovering the nature of reality and through it Deity. Plato referred to Geometry as being the knowledge of the eternal. He is also quoted as saying: “Geometry must ever tend to draw the soul towards the earth”
Some Masonic researchers believe that the letter “G” represents a little known method of Biblical interpretation called “gematria”. One of the earliest known references to this method is found in Bariatha of R. Eliezer ben R. Jose, the Galiean (circa 200 CE). This is a collection of 32 rabbinical rules. Gematria is listed within this treatise as a rabbinical method of biblical analysis.

The Hebrew and Greek alphabets were also used as numbers. Therefore every Hebrew word and every Greek word is the sum of the value of the individual letters. Exploring the method of letter-number substitution, one looks for words, names, and phrases that add up to like values. Like values are though to have meaningful relationships. As an example, the Hebrew word for “heaven” (ha-shamayim) has the same gematria value as the word for “soul” (neshamah); 395 which is derived from adding up each letter to arrive at a total. Under the Qabalist tradition, one would say this means that the soul is identical to heaven. (source: www.calodges.org/no332/GLEducation/fellowcraft.htm)

Remarks of Worshipful Master Kurt Hoffmann

2009-12-19T21:34:00.000-08:00

Installation, December 18, 2009

Just over three years ago, I was raised from a dead level to a living perpendicular. At that time I never imagined that I would be leading a lodge, let alone one that I had helped start. This is both a blessing and a curse for our fraternity. It is a vote of confidence for newer members, but at the same time, what does it say when the newest, most unproven members are thrust into leadership roles?

Two things. First, it shows that Masonry continues to attract good men. But conversely, it shows that Masonry does not have an available pool of leaders within its existing ranks.

With this dilemma, what can we do? Do we continue to recruit good men, only to burn them out in leadership roles? I would say that is a death warrant for our craft. We need to develop men for leadership roles. Take our time; try different brothers in different roles without the expectation of them moving on in the line the next year. That is what I’ve sought to do with the officer cadre for this lodge; let those who are in appointed office serve without the expectation of moving up the next year, but simply to focus on their role this term.

With that, we have focused on an aggressive plan for 2010. This plan is focused on the three pillars of Specialis Procer, Education, Socializing, and Ritual. Some of you have seen this plan, while it has yet to be officially presented. Regardless, the plan for 2010 will, hopefully, allow us to look at Masonry through a different light, one that will make our lodge a beacon for many years to come.

I truly appreciate the confidence placed in me, and pray that I will not only meet, but also exceed every expectation as Master for 2010.

To the officers, we all serve the Lodge, not the Master. And that is what we must focus on and work toward the bar has been set high, and we will meet it.

Brethren 2010 will be a year of adventure and paradigm shifting, and Specialis Procer will be leading the way.

Are we up to the challenge?

Paper

2009-08-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

A paper was presented by Brother Timothy J. Whipple at a special Festive Board on August 28, 2009.

Dedicated to a Proposition: The 87 Year Journey from Philadelphia to Gettysburg

What is Justice? It is an eternal question; a question that philosophers have labored for centuries to answer. It is, perhaps, the most indispensable question in all of political philosophy, yet it is also a question to which every Mason is provided a ready answer. For we all learn, upon taking the first degree, that Justice is "that standard or boundary of right which enables us to render to every man his just due without distinction".

The first degree also provides us guidance as to the role of Justice in our daily lives, for we learn that Justice is "the very cement and support of civil society" and that it should be our "invariable practice never to deviate" from its "minutest principles."

These are noble sentiments indeed, and beautifully expressed. But have we truly considered their meaning? How can we better understand the nature of Justice? And how we can enrich our own appreciation of the role it plays in making good men better?

One of the many ways we can come to better understand Justice is to study Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. We should do this because the immortal words of the Address hold in their poetry the most poignant meditation on Justice to be found anywhere in our political thought; we should do this because, through a close reading of the text, we can also come to better understand another important document in the history of political thought: the Declaration of Independence; and we should do this because the Address clearly shows that Lincoln's conception of Justice is one thoroughly in harmony with the Masonic understanding of this cardinal virtue.

Ultimately then, by studying the Address, we can begin to see Justice as Lincoln saw it, and by seeing Justice as Lincoln saw it, we will be that much better equipped every day to deal justly with others.

However, if we are to fully appreciate Lincoln's words at Gettysburg, we must first

understand the context in which he delivered them.

If the Civil War is the greatest crisis in our history, then the battle of Gettysburg is the most important battle in our history, because it marks the turning point of the war. For that reason, the battle is frequently referred to as the South's "high water mark;" the closest the Confederacy would ever come to winning the war.

In the summer of 1863, the outcome of the Civil War was very much in doubt, and the collective fate of theUnited States of America, hung in the balance. In May of that year, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had soundly defeated the Union army at Chancellorsville, and while that battle had taken the life of Stonewall Jackson, his best field commander, Lee still hoped to mount a successful invasion of the North.

He believed that if he could achieve a major strategic victory on Union soil, he could erode the public's support for the war, cause the defeat of Lincoln and the Republicans in the 1864 elections, and give the South a chance to negotiate its independence with a Democratic administration uninterested in continuing Lincoln's war. With these objectives in mind in late June of 1863, Lee marched the Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania and brought the war into the very backyard of the Union.

For his part, Lincoln fervently sought to keep the country unified, but despite the North's greater population and more plentiful resources, his commanders had suffered one defeat

after another at the hands of Lee's Army, and a successful invasion of the North by Lee could indeed have turned public opinion against the war. After the defeat at Chancellorsville, Lincoln installed General George G. Meade as the new commander of the the Army of the Potomac and tasked him with intercepting Lee and crushing the invasion.

On July 1st, Lee and Meade collided near the village of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and for three brutal days, more than 160,000 men struggled against each other under the hot summer sun in the most titanic battle ever fought on American soil. During those three days, the two armies sustained a combined total of almost 50,000 casualties.

On the final day of the battle, Lee gambled the fate of the South on an epic final assault upon the center of Meade's line. Like a gray human wave, Pickett's Charge swept across the field of battle, crashing against the Union's fortified position atop Cemetery Ridge, but when the wave receded, instead of routing Meade, Lee found his grand army shattered, and with it, the Confederacy's last best hope for an independent, Southern nation.

After the battle, the Union purchased land near the battlefield for the establishment of a national cemetery to honor the fallen. To mark the occasion, a dedication ceremony was organized for November 19, 1863. In one of history's great ironies, the keynote speaker that day was not President Lincoln. It was actually a now largely forgotten politician named Edward Everett.

Mr. Everett, a former Congressman, Senator, Governor of Massachusetts, Secretary of State, Vice Presidential candidate, and President of Harvard University, was also one of the most celebrated orators of the 19th century, and he spoke for over two hours that day, recounting the events of the battle in meticulous detail. While his speech is now neither remembered nor even much read, it was considered successful at the time.

Unfortunately for poor Mr. Everett, he had the ill luck of sharing the stage with President Lincoln, who had been asked merely to deliver "a few appropriate remarks" in dedication. Lincoln followed Everett's 13,607 word grand oration with just 256 words; 256 unforgettable words that not only settled for all time the meaning of the greatest crisis in our history, but that also re-calibrated our civic relationship with both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Here are the words Lincoln spoke over the graves of the fallen that day:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...wecan not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we sayhere, but it can never forget what they didhere. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us:
That from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion...
That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom...
And that government of the people, by thepeople, for the people...
Shall not perish from the earth.

The opening words of the Address, "Four score and seven years ago...," are perhaps its signature phrase. In fact, these words are probably the most famous invocation in all of political rhetoric. We all know these words, but how closely have we actually examinedthem? Do we understand why Lincoln begins the Address this way? Do we fully grasp the deeper meaning he is trying to convey, or do we just like his poetic style?

I believe there are at least two substantive reasons why Lincoln begins the Address as he does. The first reason is religious. The second reason is political.

As to the first reason, the occasion was the dedication of a cemetery, and Lincoln needed to channel a sense of sorrow and lamentation that was especially funereal. To a 19th century audience steeped in the King James Bible, the "fourscore" phrasing would have been both immediately recognizable and peculiarly appropriate for such an occasion.

In 1611, when the King James Bible was published, "score" was commonly used to mean twenty, much as today we still use "dozen" to mean twelve. There are, in fact, many instances of "score" in the King James bible, but perhaps the most well known is in Psalm 90, verse 10, which reads:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Thus, by beginning the Address with the "fourscore" reference, Lincoln is invoking the fatalism of the 90th Psalm and reminding us that our time on earth is short; indeed, he is reminding us that our days are, quite literally, numbered.

Yet, as appropriate as the biblical reference is to the semi-religious nature of the occasion, it is the second purpose that is actually more important to Lincoln. For what he seeks to do from a political perspective is to redefine the meaning of the War itself as a fight for the very soul of American democracy, and so the second reason why Lincoln begins the Address as he does is to focus our attention on a particular date; a date of paramount importance not only to the substance of his remarks, but to the country itself; a date infused with enough symbolic power to rally the spirit of a broken and grieving nation.

But, in order to find this date, we need to do a little math.

Four score and seven years is 87 years. The Gettysburg Address was delivered in 1863. If you subtract 87 years from 1863, you get 1776. As you probably know, it was on July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that the Continental Congress of the British colonies in America approved the wording of Jefferson's now famous resolution declaring independence from Great Britain. At the top of this resolution, the 13 British colonies purport to be "The 13 United States of America."

Thus, by beginning the Address essentially by saying "87 years ago," Lincoln is transporting us back in time to the events of 1776, and by ornamenting the opening words in a religious archaism, he is further underscoring the importance of the declaration made on that date.

However, the "fourscore" reference is by no means the only reference in the Address to the Declaration; there are subtle allusions to it suffused throughout the short speech. In fact, the Gettysburg Address is merely Lincoln's attempt to elevate the Declaration to the highest possible position of prominence in our civics; it is an attempt to elevate it even above the Constitution, and in doing so, make the Declaration the true moral compass of the nation.

But, even though these allusions are subtle, they are clear, and they become apparent if you read the text closely. For example, immediately after invoking the spirit of 1776 with the opening words, in his very next breath, Lincoln says that "our fathers brought forth on this content, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Once you've done the math and understand that Lincoln's talking about 1776, the meaning of this line is also clear: it is a direct reference to the legacy and even the language of the Declaration itself.

The phrase "brought forth...a new nation" represents Lincoln's belief that, as a nation, we were "born" on July 4, 1776. Legally speaking, though, the Federal government is established by the Constitution, which was not ratified until 1789. Furthermore, the Constitution wasn't even our first national charter. The very first government uniting the original 13 colonies was established by a document called the Articles of Confederation, which was adopted in 1781. In other words, legally speaking, we were not one nation until 1781; we were instead 13 completely independent states.

It may surprise some of you to learn that what the Declaration of Independence does, and all that it does, is state in writing that the colonies believe they no longer belong to the realm of Great Britain and that they have a natural right to form their own government. The legally important part of the document is the following passage:

These United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

Notice that the passage uses the plural "they are" in reference to the states, rather than the singular "it is." Today, we say the "United States is" but we haven't always. Once upon a time, people commonly said "the United States are." It was the Civil War that changed that.

It was Lincoln who changed that.

It's also important to point out what the Declaration of Independence does NOT do and that is establish a government. That is the purpose of both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Naturally, being a lawyer as well as the head of the executive branch of the Federal government, Lincoln very well knows this, yet he insists on dating the birth of the nation to 1776; which begs the question:

What is it in the Declaration of Independence that so attracts Lincoln?

The answer, of course, is that it is the Preamble, which contains Jefferson's now hallowed expression of the basic rights of mankind. The Preamble, in fact, forms the foundation of Lincoln's own political philosophy, particularly the following most eloquent passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We know that Lincoln revered the Declaration because he wrote and spoke about it on a number of occasions besides the Gettysburg Address, and on most of those other occasions, he was far more direct in his praise for its promises of liberty, equality, and self-government than he is in the Address.

Even a brief examination of what Lincoln said on these other occasions sheds a lot of light on the meaning of the Address itself. For example, in an 1861 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the very place where the Declaration was signed, Lincoln mused about how much the Declaration meant to him personally, to the country, and even to the rest of the world.

He said:

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together.

It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.

Perhaps somewhat romantically, Lincoln believes the United States was founded on an idea, or rather, in the language of the Address, "a proposition," and in the Declaration's revolutionary affirmation of the unalienable rights of man, Lincoln believes he has identified the very cornerstone upon which America is built.

In the 18th century, Jefferson's bold declarations of liberty and equality were revolutionary, yet, a mere 87 years later, Lincoln has come to see them as indispensable both to our national identity and to our commitment to a democratic form of government. In an 1854 speech in Peoria, Lincoln spoke of his own understanding of liberty and its role in the American system of government.

He said:

[N]o man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet anchor—of American republicanism...

Now, I know what you must be thinking after hearing that quote: What is a sheet anchor?

Well, in the parlance of sailing, a sheet anchor is "a large extra anchor intended for use in an emergency," and so, as used in this context, it means "a source of aid in a time of trouble." What Lincoln means, then, is that he believes the right to liberty forms the backbone of American government, and that it has ample strength to sustain us in times of crisis.

Yet he also believes that liberty without equality is a hollow right indeed. A few lines later in the Peoria speech, Lincoln quotes at length from the Preamble to the Declaration before saying this about equality:

I have quoted [from the Declaration] merely to show that, according to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.

Now, the relation of masters and slaves is, [without further discussion], a total violation of this principle.

The master not only governs the slave without his consent; but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself.

Allow ALL the governed an EQUAL voice in the government, and that, and that ONLY, is self government.

What I think Lincoln is saying in this passage is that without a firm commitment to

individual liberty, you do not have equality; that without equality, you do not have

autonomy; and that without the autonomy to participate in its decisions, you do not have a legitimate government.

All of this, Lincoln believes, is enshrined for all time in the Declaration, and ultimately, what he sees in the Declaration is an affirmation by the founders of his own most deeply held political beliefs.

Even more than that, though, Lincoln believes that the Declaration represents to the rest of the world something profoundly groundbreaking: not just "a new nation" but a new kind of nation; a nation that by the very nature of its creation advanced forever the progress of mankind.

After his election to the presidency in 1860, Lincoln made the following statement about the purpose of the Declaration:

[The signers of the declaration] meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which would be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.

The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be - as, thank God, it is now proving itself - a stumbling block...to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.

This passage may be the most far-reaching claim Lincoln ever made about the Declaration.

As you can see, he sees the Declaration as the perfect embodiment of the progressive example that America sets for the rest of the world.

But even in a passage so reverent of the Declaration, Lincoln can't help but reveal his fears about the events of his own time. In addition to his optimistic assessment of the Declaration's value to all of mankind, this passage also reveals his belief that the values upon which the country was founded, the very values that made this country a shining city on a hill, were at that very moment under assault.

.....Up to this point in my remarks, I have focused on the positive aspects of what Lincoln sees in the Declaration and on how his understanding of its principles informed practically all of his political thought. But in doing so, I have largely ignored the sense of peril and grief that also permeates the Gettysburg Address. In fact, perhaps Lincoln's most important goal in delivering the Address was to harden the North's resolve to win the war and to keep a weary nation from flinching at the difficult work of reunification.

To do that, though, he had to give the country a new vision of itself, a vision worth saving, even at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. That vision, it turned out, was an old and obvious truth: the proposition that all men are created equal.

To Lincoln, the Civil War was the trial by fire of the principles announced in the Declaration.

When he says in the Address "Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation, or anynation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure" he means that what is at stake in the conflict is whether the principles of liberty and equality can survive in a world full of slavers and oppressors.

And so, in this attempt to give meaning to a terrible and costly war, Lincoln seeks to redefine the conflict by making the issue not the narrow legal question of whether states have the right to regulate their own property, but the sweeping patriotic question of whether we are willing to tear down all that the founders built.

To put it another way, Lincoln seeks to cast the war as the struggle to regain our own lost birthright and to restore the principles upon which the nation was first founded. But that requires convincing the nation that slavery constitutes a vile affront to those principles.

As early as the 1854 Peoria speech, Lincoln was arguing that the existence of slavery represented the gravest possible threat to democracy in America and that a failure to adhere to "our ancient faith" in the Declaration would degrade us in the eyes of the rest of the world, which was anxiously waiting to see whether America's experiment with representative Democracy would succeed.

Near the end of the speech he says:

Let no one be deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and [the spread of slavery to the territories], are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter.

Fellow countrymen—Americans south, as well as north, shall we make no effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world, express the apprehension "that the one retrograde institution in America, is undermining the principles of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system the
world ever saw."

This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it—to despise it?

Is there no danger to liberty itself, in discarding the earliest practice, and first precept of our ancient faith?

In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware, lest we "cancel and tear to pieces" even the white man's charter of freedom.

As this passage illustrates, Lincoln believed that the original promise of the Declaration was being compromised by the spread of slavery, thereby endangering the freedom of all Americans.

The biggest problem, however, with Lincoln's project to "restore" the Declaration was that, despite the symbolic importance of Jefferson's language, the Constitution itself tacitly approved of the institution of slavery.

It's worth taking a few moments to understand how that could be and what effect it had on our politics.

In Lincoln's time, the word "slavery" didn't appear in the text of the Constitution nor even in the bill of rights. In fact, it's not until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery with the 13th amendment that the word "slavery" first appears in the Constitution.

The reason for this lies partly in history and partly in law. Slavery existed in America long before the Constitution was written and was in fact the primary system of labor in the Southern economy. To many people in the 18th and 19th centuries, a "slave" was merely property, with no more rights than cattle or horses, and the regulation of such property was a matter properly left to the states, not to the federal government.

And there is ample support for this position in the Bill of Rights itself: the 10th amendment to the Constitution provides that all powers "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Because the Constitution, at least in Lincoln's time, did not prohibitthe states from recognizing the ownership of persons, the states were free to allow it.

The closest the Constitution itself comes to mentioning slavery is in Article I, section 2, in a provision regarding the apportionment of the House of Representatives. That section provides that representatives

"shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding TO the whole number of free Persons...three fifths of all other Persons."

In other words, throughout the South, wherever slavery was legal, the states were allowed to count 3/5ths of their slave populations for purposes of determining how many representatives they were allowed to send to Congress. This was hugely significant to the political power of the South because there were millions of slaves in the Southern states. In fact, slaves made up about 40% of all people living in the South.

Consider this: At the beginning of the war, there were about 20 million people living in the North, virtually all of them free; but in the South, on the other hand, there were only 9 million people, and of those, almost 4 million were slaves. When such a large slave population was included in the calculation of the number of Congressional representatives,

the practical result was that a few white Southerners got to elect far more Congressmen

than they would otherwise have been entitled to, giving the South a degree of political influence far out of proportion to its voting population.

The makeup of the Senate also reflected the over-sized influence of the Southern states.

Then, as now and as it has always been, each state got two Senators, no matter how large or small its population. In order to maintain a "balance" of sectional interests between the North and the South, as the country expanded and new states were admitted to the Union, slave states and free states were admitted together, carefully maintaining an equal number of each, and thus an equal number of slave and free Senators. Because every bill must pass through both chambers to become law, this "balance" of power in the Senate gave the South the power to kill any Federal anti-slavery legislation .

But the Congress wasn't the only branch of government in which the South was able to achieve disproportionate influence. Between 1789 and 1850, Southerners, particularly wealthy Virginia plantation owners, simply dominated the Presidency.

The list of Southern presidents in the era before the Civil War is long indeed, and includes some of the most celebrated presidents in our history: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, and Taylor. But the fact that this was even possible is partly due to the effects of slavery because it is the number of electoral college votes that decide the presidency, and the electoral college votes are calculated based on the number of Senators and Representatives a state has.

Moreover, whoever controls the Presidency, also controls nominations to the Supreme Court, and this is precisely what the South had managed to achieve in the years leading up to the Civil War. After the Dred Scott case, Lincoln and many others feared that the Supreme Court was poised to strike down all Northern laws prohibiting slavery, and thereby spread slavery across the nation by legal fiat.

That the Northern states, with a free population at least 4 times larger than that of the South, might one day be forced to accept slavery within their borders represented to Lincoln a deeply undemocratic state of affairs.

This state of affairs was also, to Lincoln, a tragic abandonment of our true principles. It was anathema to liberty, anathema to equality, and anathema to the very idea of selfgovernment.

It was a rejection of all that the Declaration represents.

The Declaration holds that all men are created equal, yet, because of the 3/5ths rule and because the number of slave states was carefully kept the same as the number of free states, it was possible for just 5 million free Southerners to control the Federal government and pursue a set of policies more favorable to its own interests than to the interests of the 20 million free people living in the North.

To put it another way, it is quite credible to argue that, in the years leading up to the Civil War, Southern whites were not only more equal than blacks, they were also more equal than Northern whites.

And this is what Lincoln means when he says that slavery was endangering even the white man's "charter of freedom". He does NOT mean that the white man would literally be put in chains, but that even the white man could be denied his unalienableright to a government in which every man's vote counts equally.

Lincoln realized that the political environment created by the Constitution was to a great degree undemocratic, and therefore, unjust. For this reason, the Civil War became, for Lincoln, a battle against the political power of slavery, a battle against a massive injustice afflicting the people of the nation.

And the fact that this battle against injustice could still be lost is the cloud that darkens the Gettysburg Address; it haunts Lincoln, sharpening the urgency of the address and quickening the sense of grief he feels for the heroes sacrificed on the field at Gettysburg.

In fact, Lincoln actually worries that our great nation, though founded on the eternal principles of liberty, equality, and Justice, might not survive. Throughout the Address, he is warning us that our Democratic system is imperiled by slavery and in desparate need of salvation.

He warns us at the beginning, with the "fourscore" reference that opens the Address. By alluding to the Biblical "limit" of a man's years, Lincoln is posing the question of whether the nation can survive even that long.

He warns us in the middle when he talks about the Civil War "testing" whether the nation can "long endure," and he warns us at the end when he admonishes us not to let popular government "perish from the earth."

Yet despite his fears for the nation's future, Lincoln does not give in to melancholy. He looks again, with hope, to the Declaration, the nation's sheet anchor, as the way to save the country from the despotic grip of slavery.

In the Peoria speech, Lincoln said:

Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution.... Let us return [slavery] to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace.
Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it...

If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.
We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people the world over shall rise up and call us blessed, to the latest generations.

When Lincoln famously predicts "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom," he is once again channeling the notion of repurification that he called for in the Peoria speech and alluding again to "re-adopting" the Declaration.

The "new birth of freedom" that he calls for in the Address is really just a return to the natural state of liberty and equality that we inherited at the originalbirth of the nation in 1776.

Moreover, Lincoln believes that only "a new birth" can save American democracy, for without it, we will be irretrievably lost to "the hateful paths of despotism." And that is the link to the closing words of the Address, in which he asserts his hope:

"that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

This passage is only slightly less well known than the opening words, and it, too, is an allusion to the Declaration.

For what is "government, of, by, and for the people" if it is not what Jefferson means when he insists that the very reason a nation institutes a government is to secure the unalienable rights of people; what is it, if it is not what Jefferson means when he declares that the powers entrusted to that government are only Justto the extent that they are derived from the consent of the people?

In other words, a close examination of the last line reveals that Lincoln's government "of, by, and for the people" is a near perfect restatement of Jefferson's declaration on the proper scope and legitimacy of government authority. And so, in closing his remarks with such a restatement, Lincoln has ended the Gettysburg Address right where he began it: with a direct appeal to the legacy of the Declaration of Independence.

And so must I end my remarks where I began them, with a consideration of what all of this teaches us about the nature of Justice.

At the beginning of this discussion, I insisted that the Masonic conception of Justice is fully in harmony with Lincoln's.

Consider again our definition of Justice:

Justice is that standard or boundary of rightwhich enables us to render to every man his just due without distinction.

As I read the words "standard or boundary of right," I understand them to mean the same thing as aprinciple; and what is a principle if not a propositionupon which we all agree?

However, simply agreeing on the rightness of a proposition isn't sufficient. If we are to put the proposition into practice, if we are to effect any benefits from adhering to it, we must spread the proposition to the wider world by way of example.

To do that, each of us must be dedicated to the proposition, so that we can use it as a compass in all our dealings with others. For if we truly believe that all men are created equal, and if we truly believe that they have been endowed by the creator with a set of natural rights that no one can take away, then this is a proposition already carved on the heart of every Mason.

And therein lies the connection to the second part of the definition which teaches that Justice "enables us to render to every man his just due without distinction." In this context, "render" means "to give what is owed, or due" to another. "Just" means what is "fair or morally right". "Without distinction" means without differentiating, or without discriminating.

Thus, when the various components of the definition are considered together, we see that the Masonic conception of Justice is, very simply, the proposition that a Mason owes, to each and every person equally, treatment that is both fair and morally right.

And we should also see by now that this conception of justice is nearly identical to Lincoln's, and nearly identical to Jefferson's. So, if we take the time to better understand Lincoln, and if we take the time to better understand Jefferson, we will be that much better prepared to practice Justice in the world and to serve every day as "the very cement and support of civil society."

Thank you.