The Builders
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THE BUILDERS
A STORY AND STUDY
OF MASONRY
BY
JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, LITT. D.
GRAND LODGE OF IOWA
_When I was a King and a Mason--
A master proved and skilled,
I cleared me ground for a palace
Such as a King should build.
I decreed and cut down to my levels,
Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a palace
Such as a King had built!_
--KIPLING
CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA
THE TORCH PRESS
NINETEEN FIFTEEN
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COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON
_First Printing, December, 1914_
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To
The Memory of
THEODORE SUTTON PARVIN
Founder of the Library of the Grand Lodge
of Iowa, with Reverence and Gratitude; to
LOUIS BLOCK
Past Grand Master of Masons in Iowa, dear Friend
and Fellow-worker, who initiated and inspired
this study, with Love and Goodwill; and
to the
YOUNG MASONS
Our Hope and Pride, for whom
this book was written
With
Fraternal Greeting
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THE ANTEROOM
Fourteen years ago the writer of this volume entered the temple of
Freemasonry, and that date stands out in memory as one of the most
significant days in his life. There was a little spread on the night
of his raising, and, as is the custom, the candidate was asked to give
his impressions of the Order. Among other things, he made request to
know if there was any little book which would tell a young man the
things he would most like to know about Masonry--what it was, whence
it came, what it teaches, and what it is trying to do in the world? No
one knew of such a book at that time, nor has any been found to meet a
need which many must have felt before and since. By an odd
coincidence, it has fallen to the lot of the author to write the
little book for which he made request fourteen years ago.
This bit of reminiscence explains the purpose of the present volume,
and every book must be judged by its spirit and purpose, not less than
by its style and contents. Written as a commission from the Grand
Lodge of Iowa, and approved by that Grand body, a copy of this book is
to be presented to every man upon whom the degree of Master Mason is
conferred within this Grand Jurisdiction. Naturally this intention has
determined the method and arrangement of the book, as well as the
matter it contains; its aim being to tell a young man entering the
order the antecedents of Masonry, its development, its philosophy, its
mission, and its ideal. Keeping this purpose always in mind, the
effort has been to prepare a brief, simple, and vivid account of the
origin, growth, and teaching of the Order, so written as to provoke a
deeper interest in and a more earnest study of its story and its
service to mankind.
No work of this kind has been undertaken, so far as is known, by any
Grand Lodge in this country or abroad--at least, not since the old
_Pocket Companion_, and other such works in the earlier times; and
this is the more strange from the fact that the need of it is so
obvious, and its possibilities so fruitful and important. Every one
who has looked into the vast literature of Masonry must often have
felt the need of a concise, compact, yet comprehensive survey to clear
the path and light the way. Especially must those feel such a need who
are not accustomed to traverse long and involved periods of history,
and more especially those who have neither the time nor the
opportunity to sift ponderous volumes to find out the facts. Much of
our literature--indeed, by far the larger part of it--was written
before the methods of scientific study had arrived, and while it
fascinates, it does not convince those who are used to the more
critical habits of research. Consequently, without knowing it, some of
our most earnest Masonic writers have made the Order a target for
ridicule by their extravagant claims as to its antiquity. They did not
make it clear in what sense it is ancient, and not a little satire has
been aimed at Masons for their gullibility in accepting as true the
wildest and most absurd legends. Besides, no history of Masonry has
been written in recent years, and some important material has come to
light in the world of historical and archaeological scholarship, making
not a little that has hitherto been obscure more clear; and there is
need that this new knowledge be related to what was already known.
While modern research aims at accuracy, too often its results are dry
pages of fact, devoid of literary beauty and spiritual appeal--a
skeleton without the warm robe of flesh and blood. Striving for
accuracy, the writer has sought to avoid making a dusty chronicle of
facts and figures, which few would have the heart to follow, with what
success the reader must decide.
Such a book is not easy to write, and for two reasons: it is the
history of a secret Order, much of whose lore is not to be written,
and it covers a bewildering stretch of time, asking that the contents
of innumerable volumes--many of them huge, disjointed, and difficult
to digest--be compact within a small space. Nevertheless, if it has
required a prodigious labor, it is assuredly worth while in behalf of
the young men who throng our temple gates, as well as for those who
are to come after us. Every line of this book has been written in the
conviction that the real history of Masonry is great enough, and its
simple teaching grand enough, without the embellishment of legend,
much less of occultism. It proceeds from first to last upon the
assurance that all that we need to do is to remove the scaffolding
from the historic temple of Masonry and let it stand out in the
sunlight, where all men can see its beauty and symmetry, and that it
will command the respect of the most critical and searching
intellects, as well as the homage of all who love mankind. By this
faith the long study has been guided; in this confidence it has been
completed.
To this end the sources of Masonic scholarship, stored in the library
of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, have been explored, and the highest
authorities have been cited wherever there is uncertainty--copious
references serving not only to substantiate the statements made, but
also, it is hoped, to guide the reader into further and more detailed
research. Also, in respect of issues still open to debate and about
which differences of opinion obtain, both sides have been given a
hearing, so far as space would allow, that the student may weigh and
decide the question for himself. Like all Masonic students of recent
times, the writer is richly indebted to the great Research Lodges of
England--especially to the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076--without
whose proceedings this study would have been much harder to write, if
indeed it could have been written at all. Such men as Gould, Hughan,
Speth, Crawley, Thorp, to name but a few--not forgetting Pike, Parvin,
Mackey, Fort, and others in this country--deserve the perpetual
gratitude of the fraternity. If, at times, in seeking to escape from
mere legend, some of them seemed to go too far toward another
extreme--forgetting that there is much in Masonry that cannot be
traced by name and date--it was but natural in their effort in behalf
of authentic history and accurate scholarship. Alas, most of those
named belong now to a time that is gone and to the people who are no
longer with us here, but they are recalled by an humble student who
would pay them the honor belonging to great men and great Masons.
This book is divided into three parts, as everything Masonic should
be: Prophecy, History, and Interpretation. The first part has to do
with the hints and foregleams of Masonry in the early history,
tradition, mythology, and symbolism of the race--finding its
foundations in the nature and need of man, and showing how the stones
wrought out by time and struggle were brought from afar to the making
of Masonry as we know it. The second part is a story of the order of
builders through the centuries, from the building of the Temple of
Solomon to the organization of the mother Grand Lodge of England, and
the spread of the Order all over the civilized world. The third part
is a statement and exposition of the faith of Masonry, its philosophy,
its religious meaning, its genius, and its ministry to the individual,
and through the individual to society and the state. Such is a bare
outline of the purpose, method, plan, and spirit of the work, and if
these be kept in mind it is believed that it will tell its story and
confide its message.
When a man thinks of our mortal lot--its greatness and its pathos, how
much has been wrought out in the past, and how binding is our
obligation to preserve and enrich the inheritance of humanity--there
comes over him a strange warming of the heart toward all his fellow
workers; and especially toward the young, to whom we must soon entrust
all that we hold sacred. All through these pages the wish has been to
make the young Mason feel in what a great and benign tradition he
stands, that he may the more earnestly strive to be a Mason not merely
in form, but in faith, in spirit, and still more, in character; and so
help to realize somewhat of the beauty we all have dreamed--lifting
into the light the latent powers and unguessed possibilities of this
the greatest order of men upon the earth. Everyone can do a little,
and if each does his part faithfully the sum of our labors will be
very great, and we shall leave the world fairer than we found it,
richer in faith, gentler in justice, wiser in pity--for we pass this
way but once, pilgrims seeking a country, even a City that hath
foundations.
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J.F.N.
_Cedar Rapids, Iowa_, September 7, 1914.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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THE ANTE-ROOM vii
PART I--PROPHECY
CHAPTER I. THE FOUNDATIONS 5
CHAPTER II. THE WORKING TOOLS 19
CHAPTER III. THE DRAMA OF FAITH 39
CHAPTER IV. THE SECRET DOCTRINE 57
CHAPTER V. THE COLLEGIA 73
PART II--HISTORY
CHAPTER I. FREE-MASONS 97
CHAPTER II. FELLOWCRAFTS 127
CHAPTER III. ACCEPTED MASONS 153
CHAPTER IV. GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 173
CHAPTER V. UNIVERSAL MASONRY 201
PART III--INTERPRETATION
CHAPTER I. WHAT IS MASONRY 239
CHAPTER II. THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 259
CHAPTER III. THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 283
BIBLIOGRAPHY 301
INDEX 306
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Part I--Prophecy
THE FOUNDATIONS
/#
_By Symbols is man guided and commanded, made happy, made
wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols,
recognized as such or not recognized: the Universe is but one vast
Symbol of God; nay, if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but
a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation
to Sense of the mystic God-given force that is in him; a Gospel of
Freedom, which he, the Messiah of Nature, preaches, as he can, by
word and act? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of
a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is,
in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real._
--THOMAS CARLYLE, _Sartor Resartus_
#/
CHAPTER I
_The Foundations_
Two arts have altered the face of the earth and given shape to the
life and thought of man, Agriculture and Architecture. Of the two, it
would be hard to know which has been the more intimately interwoven
with the inner life of humanity; for man is not only a planter and a
builder, but a mystic and a thinker. For such a being, especially in
primitive times, any work was something more than itself; it was a
truth found out. In becoming useful it attained some form, enshrining
at once a thought and a mystery. Our present study has to do with the
second of these arts, which has been called the matrix of
civilization.
When we inquire into origins and seek the initial force which carried
art forward, we find two fundamental factors--physical necessity and
spiritual aspiration. Of course, the first great impulse of all
architecture was need, honest response to the demand for shelter; but
this demand included a Home for the Soul, not less than a roof over
the head. Even in this response to primary need there was something
spiritual which carried it beyond provision for the body; as the men
of Egypt, for instance, wanted an indestructible resting-place, and so
built the pyramids. As Capart says, prehistoric art shows that this
utilitarian purpose was in almost every case blended with a religious,
or at least a magical, purpose.[1] The spiritual instinct, in seeking
to recreate types and to set up more sympathetic relations with the
universe, led to imitation, to ideas of proportion, to the passion for
beauty, and to the effort after perfection.
Man has been always a builder, and nowhere has he shown himself more
significantly than in the buildings he has erected. When we stand
before them--whether it be a mud hut, the house of a cliff-dweller
stuck like the nest of a swallow on the side of a canon, a Pyramid, a
Parthenon, or a Pantheon--we seem to read into his soul. The builder
may have gone, perhaps ages before, but here he has left something of
himself, his hopes, his fears, his ideas, his dreams. Even in the
remote recesses of the Andes, amidst the riot of nature, and where man
is now a mere savage, we come upon the remains of vast, vanished
civilizations, where art and science and religion reached unknown
heights. Wherever humanity has lived and wrought, we find the
crumbling ruins of towers, temples, and tombs, monuments of its
industry and its aspiration. Also, whatever else man may have
been--cruel, tyrannous, vindictive--his buildings always have
reference to religion. They bespeak a vivid sense of the Unseen and
his awareness of his relation to it. Of a truth, the story of the
Tower of Babel is more than a myth. Man has ever been trying to build
to heaven, embodying his prayer and his dream in brick and stone.
For there are two sets of realities--material and spiritual--but they
are so interwoven that all practical laws are exponents of moral laws.
Such is the thesis which Ruskin expounds with so much insight and
eloquence in his _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which he argues
that the laws of architecture are moral laws, as applicable to the
building of character as to the construction of cathedrals. He finds
those laws to be Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and,
as the crowning grace of all, that principle to which Polity owes its
stability, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, and Creation its
continuance--_Obedience_. He holds that there is no such thing as
liberty, and never can be. The stars have it not; the earth has it
not; the sea has it not. Man fancies that he has freedom, but if he
would use the word Loyalty instead of Liberty, he would be nearer the
truth, since it is by obedience to the laws of life and truth and
beauty that he attains to what he calls liberty.
Throughout that brilliant essay, Ruskin shows how the violation of
moral laws spoils the beauty of architecture, mars its usefulness, and
makes it unstable. He points out, with all the variations of emphasis,
illustration, and appeal, that beauty is what is imitated from natural
forms, consciously or unconsciously, and that what is not so derived,
but depends for its dignity upon arrangement received from the human
mind, expresses, while it reveals, the quality of the mind, whether it
be noble or ignoble. Thus:
/#[4,66]
All building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or
governing; and the secrets of his success are his knowing
what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two great
intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one consisting in a
just and humble veneration of the works of God upon earth,
and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those
works which has been vested in man.[2]
#/
What our great prophet of art thus elaborated so eloquently, the early
men forefelt by instinct, dimly it may be, but not less truly. If
architecture was born of need it soon showed its magic quality, and
all true building touched depths of feeling and opened gates of
wonder. No doubt the men who first balanced one stone over two others
must have looked with astonishment at the work of their hands, and
have worshiped the stones they had set up. This element of mystical
wonder and awe lasted long through the ages, and is still felt when
work is done in the old way by keeping close to nature, necessity, and
faith. From the first, ideas of sacredness, of sacrifice, of ritual
rightness, of magic stability, of likeness to the universe, of
perfection of form and proportion glowed in the heart of the builder,
and guided his arm. Wren, philosopher as he was, decided that the
delight of man in setting up columns was acquired through worshiping
in the groves of the forest; and modern research has come to much the
same view, for Sir Arthur Evans shows that in the first European age
columns were gods. All over Europe the early morning of architecture
was spent in the worship of great stones.[3]
If we go to old Egypt, where the art of building seems first to have
gathered power, and where its remains are best preserved, we may read
the ideas of the earliest artists. Long before the dynastic period a
strong people inhabited the land who developed many arts which they
handed on to the pyramid-builders. Although only semi-naked savages
using flint instruments in a style much like the bushmen, they were
the root, so to speak, of a wonderful artistic stock. Of the Egyptians
Herodotus said, "They gather the fruits of the earth with less labor
than any other people." With agriculture and settled life came trade
and stored-up energy which might essay to improve on caves and pits
and other rude dwellings. By the Nile, perhaps, man first aimed to
overpass the routine of the barest need, and obey his soul. There he
wrought out beautiful vases of fine marble, and invented square
building.
At any rate, the earliest known structure actually discovered, a
prehistoric tomb found in the sands at Hieraconpolis, is already
right-angled. As Lethaby reminds us, modern people take squareness
very much for granted as being a self-evident form, but the discovery
of the square was a great step in geometry.[4] It opened a new era in
the story of the builders. Early inventions must have seemed like
revelations, as indeed they were; and it is not strange that skilled
craftsmen were looked upon as magicians. If man knows as much as he
does, the discovery of the Square was a great event to the primitive
mystics of the Nile. Very early it became an emblem of truth,
justice, and righteousness, and so it remains to this day though
uncountable ages have passed. Simple, familiar, eloquent, it brings
from afar a sense of the wonder of the dawn, and it still teaches a
lesson which we find it hard to learn. So also the cube, the
compasses, and the keystone, each a great advance for those to whom
architecture was indeed "building touched with emotion," as showing
that its laws are the laws of the Eternal.
Maspero tells us that the temples of Egypt, even from earliest times,
were built in the image of the earth as the builders had imagined
it.[5] For them the earth was a sort of flat slab more long than wide,
and the sky was a ceiling or vault supported by four great pillars.
The pavement, represented the earth; the four angles stood for the
pillars; the ceiling, more often flat, though sometimes curved,
corresponded to the sky. From the pavement grew vegetation, and water
plants emerged from the water; while the ceiling, painted dark blue,
was strewn with stars of five points. Sometimes, the sun and moon were
seen floating on the heavenly ocean escorted by the constellations,
and the months and days. There was a far withdrawn holy place, small
and obscure, approached through a succession of courts and columned
halls, all so arranged on a central axis as to point to the sunrise.
Before the outer gates were obelisks and avenues of statues. Such were
the shrines of the old solar religion, so oriented that on one day in
the year the beams of the rising sun, or of some bright star that
hailed his coming, should stream down the nave and illumine the
altar.[6]
Clearly, one ideal of the early builders was that of sacrifice, as
seen in their use of the finest materials; and another was accuracy of
workmanship. Indeed, not a little of the earliest work displayed an
astonishing technical ability, and such work must point to some
underlying idea which the workers sought to realize. Above all things
they sought permanence. In later inscriptions relating to buildings,
phrases like these occur frequently: "it is such as the heavens in all
its quarters;" "firm as the heavens." Evidently the basic idea was
that, as the heavens were stable, not to be moved, so a building put
into proper relation with the universe would acquire magical
stability. It is recorded that when Ikhnaton founded his new city,
four boundary stones were accurately placed, that so it might be
exactly square, and thus endure forever. Eternity was the ideal aimed
at, everything else being sacrificed for that aspiration.
How well they realized their dream is shown us in the Pyramids, of all
monuments of mankind the oldest, the most technically perfect, the
largest, and the most mysterious. Ages come and go, empires rise and
fall, philosophies flourish and fail, and man seeks him out many
inventions, but they stand silent under the bright Egyptian night, as
fascinating as they are baffling. An obelisk is simply a pyramid,
albeit the base has become a shaft, holding aloft the oldest emblems
of solar faith--a Triangle mounted on a Square. When and why this
figure became holy no one knows, save as we may conjecture that it was
one of those sacred stones which gained its sanctity in times far back
of all recollection and tradition, like the _Ka'aba_ at Mecca. Whether
it be an imitation of the triangle of zodiacal light, seen at certain
times in the eastern sky at sunrise and sunset, or a feat of masonry
used as a symbol of Heaven, as the Square was an emblem of Earth, no
one may affirm.[7] In the Pyramid Texts the Sun-god, when he created
all the other gods, is shown sitting on the apex of the sky in the
form of a Phoenix--that Supreme God to whom two architects, Suti and
Hor, wrote so noble a hymn of praise.[8]
White with the worship of ages, ineffably beautiful and pathetic, is
the old light-religion of humanity--a sublime nature-mysticism in
which Light was love and life, and Darkness evil and death. For the
early man light was the mother of beauty, the unveiler of color, the
elusive and radiant mystery of the world, and his speech about it was
reverent and grateful. At the gates of the morning he stood with
uplifted hands, and the sun sinking in the desert at eventide made him
wistful in prayer, half fear and half hope, lest the beauty return no
more. His religion, when he emerged from the night of animalism, was a
worship of the Light--his temple hung with stars, his altar a glowing
flame, his ritual a woven hymn of night and day. No poet of our day,
not even Shelley, has written lovelier lyrics in praise of the Light
than those hymns of Ikhnaton in the morning of the world.[9] Memories
of this religion of the dawn linger with us today in the faith that
follows the Day-Star from on high, and the Sun of Righteousness--One
who is the Light of the World in life, and the Lamp of Poor Souls in
the night of death.
Here, then, are the real foundations of Masonry, both material and
moral: in the deep need and aspiration of man, and his creative
impulse; in his instinctive Faith, his quest of the Ideal, and his
love of the Light. Underneath all his building lay the feeling,
prophetic of his last and highest thought, that the earthly house of
his life should be in right relation with its heavenly prototype, the
world-temple--imitating on earth the house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. If he erected a square temple, it was an image
of the earth; if he built a pyramid, it was a picture of a beauty
shown him in the sky; as, later, his cathedral was modelled after the
mountain, and its dim and lofty arch a memory of the forest vista--its
altar a fireside of the soul, its spire a prayer in stone. And as he
wrought his faith and dream into reality, it was but natural that the
tools of the builder should become emblems of the thoughts of the
thinker. Not only his tools, but, as we shall see, the very stones
with which he worked became sacred symbols--the temple itself a vision
of that House of Doctrine, that Home of the Soul, which, though
unseen, he is building in the midst of the years.