The Builder Magazine

December 1919 - Volume V - Number 12

 

MEMORIALS TO GREAT MEN WHO WERE MASONS

MAJOR GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK

BY BRO. GEO. W. BAIRD. P. G. M.. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

THE UNITED STATES ARMY has never developed a more exemplary or able character than Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, whose record bears no semblance to a blemish.

 

The Grand Secretary of Pennsylvania writes me: "Our records show that General Hancock was admitted a Master Mason in Charity Lodge No. 90, at Norristown, Pennsylvania, October 31st, 1860."

 

General Hancock was at that time 36 years of age, and was enjoying a rest at his home. Like most officers he could not remain long at one place, and even if he had desired to become active in his lodge he could not have continued so.

 

The General was born in Pennsylvania in 1824, a descendant from English and Welsh ancestory, and was brought up in the Baptist Church where his father had been a deacon for many years. At an early age he showed a fondness for military tactics, and began drilling his schoolmates in great earnestness. We have always thought that from such boys the plebes at West Point should be selected, instead of the present system.

 

At the age of sixteen Hancock was entered at West Point and in his class there were graduated Grant, McClellan, Franklin, W. F. Smith, J. J. Reynolds, Rosecrans, Lyon, Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, F. K. Smith, and others, who became general officers during the civil war.

 

Hancock was graduated in 1844 and assigned to the Sixth Infantry, his first duty being in the "Indian Country" near Red River on the Texas border, and on this strenuous duty he remained about two years. He than went to the Mexican border where he remained until the beginning of the Mexican War when General Scott took him along with the invading army. Hancock commanded a storming party at Natural Bridge, between Pueblo and Vera Cruz, with great success and which won him brevet promotion. He was again brevetted for conspicuous bravery at Contreras and at Cherubusco.

 

Hancock was at headquarters when it was discovered that the entire "St. Patrick's Legion," numbering three hundred Irishmen, had deserted and joined the enemy. Hancock, as well as other officers, could not see that General Scott could pursue any other course than the one which he took when the Irish were captured, i.e., courtmartial them. The result was that the three hundred Irish volunteers who had deserted in time of war and joined the enemy, were hanged by sentence of the court.

 

Hancock served as Regimental Quartermaster in Missouri from 1848 to 1855. In 1849 he secured a leave of absence and visited his home for the first time since joining the army.

 

Hancock served in the Seminole War in Florida and afterwards in the "Utah outbreak." He served at Benecia (California) and when transferred from there to Fort Leavenworth he rode the entire distance on horseback, the only available transportation at that time.

 

He was commissioned a Brigadier when the Civil War began, leading the Wisconsin, Maine, Pennsylvania and New York troops. His efforts in aiding McClelland's organization of the Army of the Potomac were untiring. He saw desperate fighting at Williamsburg, Frazier's Farm, and at South Mountain he commanded two Army Corps, as he did at Antietam, and after two days of battle his corps advanced to Harper's Ferry, where the troops were mobilized for the march on Warrenton and Fredericksburg.

 

His operations at the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, and at Cold Harbor, were successful, but at Ream's Station his corps met with defeat.

 

After the assassination of the President the headquarters of General Hancock were transferred to Washington, and he was placed in command of the defenses. The times were strenuous. Mr. Davis was charged with conspiracy to assassinate the President, and the public was wild and hysterical over the assassination, but General Hancock, always calm and reasonable, never shared in the accusation of Mr. Davis.

 

There has probably never been a more popular officer in the Army than Winfield Scott Hancock. A poet has said "to know a man it is necessary to live with him." The men with whom Hancock lived were the men who loved him most. McClellan gave him the name of "Superbe," while Sherman said to a reporter: "If you will sit down and write the best thing that can be put in language about General Hancock as an officer and a gentleman, I will sign it without hesitation."

 

Hancock was a democrat. There are democrats and democrats. Hancock was the same kind as Jefferson and Cleveland - not the other kind. He was put in nomination by the democrats, not because he sought it, but because they probably saw a better chance of electing him than any other democrat of that day. They probably would have succeeded had not the other side nominated a splendid man who was better known, and who was "the most elected" of any man of his day. Though the usual mud-slinging was indulged in, there was nothing his adversaries could say further than that he was a good man and weighed 250 pounds. And if that is the worst the politicians could say, we may rest assured that General Hancock was all that General Sherman pronounced.

 

The memorial to General Hancock is a bronze equestrian statue on a handsomely sculptured granite base, situated at Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street, in Washington. It was modeled by Henry Elliot and was unveiled in 1896 on the occasion of a rally of the Second Army Corps. The soldierly bearing, splendid pose and portraiture in the memorial excites admiration. The situation is in the business part of the city and on the principal thoroughfare.

 

----o----

 

THE ENCYCLICAL LETTER "HUMANUM GENUS" OF THE POPE LEO XIII

 

In the November issue of THE BUILDER we published the Encyclical Letter "Humanum Genus" of Pope Leo XIII. Brother Albert Pike, Grand Commander of the Supreme Council 33d Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, made the following reference to it in his Allocution to the Supreme Council in October, 1884. Brother Pike's famous reply to the Pope's Letter will be published in an early issue.

 

IF THE Encyclical Letter of Leo XIII., entitled, from its opening words, "Humanum Genus," had been nothing more than a denunciation of Free-Masonry, I should not have thought it worth replying to. But under the guise of a condemnation of Free-Masonry, and a recital of the enormities and immoralities of the Order, in some respects so absurdly false as to be ludicrous, notwithstanding its malignity, it proved upon perusal to be a declaration of war, and the signal for a crusade, against the rights of men individually and of communities of men as organisms; against the separation of Church and State, and the confinement of the Church within the limits of its legitimate functions; against education free from sectarian religious influences; against the civil policy of non- Catholic countries in regard to marriage and divorce; against the great doctrine upon which, as upon a rock not to be shaken, the foundations of our Republic rest, that "men are superior to institutions, and not institutions to men"; against the right of the people to depose oppressive, cruel and worthless rulers; against the exercise of the rights of free thought and free speech, and against, not only republican, but all constitutional government.

 

It was the signal for the outbreaking of an already organized conspiracy against the peace of the world, the progress of intellect, the emancipation of humanity, the immunity of human creatures from arrest, imprisonment, torture, and murder by arbitrary power, the right of men to the free pursuit of happiness. It was a declaration of war, arraying all faithful Catholics in the United States, not only against their fellow-citizens, the Brethren of the Order of Free-Masons, but against the principles that are the very life-blood of the government of the people of which they were supposed to be a part, and not the members of Italian Colonies, docile and obedient subjects of a foreign Potentate, and of the Cardinals, European and American, his Princes of the Church.

 

Therefore, seeing it nowhere replied to in the English language in a manner that seemed to me worthy of Free-Masonry, I undertook to answer it for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, which has been ever prompt to vindicate itself from aspersion, and carry the war into the quarters of error. I did not propose to stand upon the defensive, protesting against the accusations of the Papal Bull, as unjust to the FreeMasonry of the English-speaking countries of the world, pleading the irresponsibility of British and American Masonry for the acts or opinions of the FreeMasonry of the Continent of Europe: nor was I inclined to apologize for the audacity of Free-Masonry in daring to exist and to be on the side of the great principles of free government.

 

When the journal in London which speaks for the Free-Masonry of the Grand Lodge of England, deprecatingly protested that the English Masonry was innocent of the charges preferred by the Papal Bull against Free-Masonry as one and indivisible; when it declared that the English Free-Masonry had no opinions political or religious, and that it did not in the least degree sympathize with the loose opinions and extravagant utterances of part of the Continental Free-Masonry, it was very justly and very conclusively checkmated by the Romish organs with the reply: "It is idle for you to protest. You are Free-Masons, and you recognize them as Free- Masons. You give them countenance, encouragement and support, and you are jointly responsible with them and cannot shirk that responsibility."

 

And here is what is said by the Bishop of Ascalon, Vicar-Apostolic of Bombay, &c., in a pastoral letter promulgating the Bull:

 

"In the performance of their duty, the Parish Priests and Confessors must not admit as valid or reasonable the common excuse that Free-Masonry in India and England aims at nothing but social amusement, mutual advancement, and charitable benevolence. Such objects require neither a terrible oath of secrecy nor an elaborate system and scale of numerous Degrees, nor a connection with the Masonic Lodges of other countries, about whose anti-Christian, anti-social, and revolutionary character and aim no doubt nor further concealment is possible. The Masonic lodges all over the world are firmly knitted and bound together in solidarity. If all of them share in the pleasure of a triumph achieved by a particular Lodge, or by the Lodges of a particular country, all must likewise submit to the stigma of an anti-Christian, anti-social, and revolutionary sect, as which Free-Masonry is in many countries already openly known, and even unblushingly confessed by its own adepts."

 

I was not willing that the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States should humiliate itself to as little purpose: nor was there any danger that it would do so.

 

The organs of our American Masonry were inclined to treat the Encyclical Letter as needing no reply, and to regard it with contemptuous indifference. In their opinion, it seemed, the lightnings of the Vatican were harmless, and the American Masonry would do a foolish thing to pay any attention to the Bull. It may be so; and I receive with due humility the admonition that to reply to it was to make much ado about nothing.

 

But the Free-Masonry of the United States is not what it was in the days of the Fathers. While it has succeeded, obedient to the impulsion of Bro.'. Richard Vaux, of Pennsylvania, and others, in pretty effectually isolating itself from the Masonry of the rest of the world, other Orders at home unceremoniously jostle it in the struggle for precedence, and it in vain appeals t its antiquity and former prestige to protect it against irreverence. Incalculable harm is being done by Bodies of base origin, whose agents traverse the country soliciting men to receive the counterfeit Degrees which they peddle, selling them by the score for ten or fifteen dollars to any one who will buy, and conferring all in an hour or so, or by administering a single obligation. Rites without claim to be Masonic, teaching nothing, worth nothing, flauntingly advertise their multitudes of Degrees that are nothing but numbers and names; new Orders called Masonic spring up like mushrooms; and even the legitimate Masonry, held responsible for all these nuisances and vagaries, parades its uniforms and gewgaws, collars and jewels, too much in the public view, and has so gained popularity while losing its right to reverence.

 

Its complacent sense of security may be rudely disturbed by and by. It seems to me that an organized crusade against it by all the Roman Catholics in the United States, an anti-Masonic movement organized and directed by the Papacy, and engineered by Priests, Bishops and Cardinals, is not a thing to be made light of by the American Masonry, treated with indifference and regarded with a lordly and sublime contempt. And it is very certain that its protestations that it has no political or religious opinions, and no sympathies with the revolutionary tendencies of the Masonry of the Continent, will neither placate the Papacy nor win for it respect anywhere.

 

If, in other countries, Free-Masonry has lost sight of the Ancient Landmarks, even tolerating communism and atheism, it is better to endure ten years of these evils than it would be to live a week under the devilish tyranny of the Inquisition and of the black soldiery of Loyola. Atheism is a dreary unbelief, but it at least does not persecute, torture, or roast men who believes that there is a God. Free-Masonry will not long indulge in extravagances of opinion or action anywhere It has within itself the energy and capacity to free itself in time of all errors: and he greatly belittle Humanity who proclaims it to be unsafe to let Error say what it will, if Truth is free to combat and confute it. But Free- Masonry will effect its reforms in its own proper way; and would not resort, if it could, not even to save itself from dissolution, to means like those which the Papacy has heretofore employed, and would gladly employ again, to extirpate Judaism, Heresy an Free- Masonry.

 

Nowhere in the world has Free-Masonry ever conspired against any Government entitled to its obedient or to men's respect. Wherever now there is a Constitutional Government which respects the rights of me and of the people and the public opinion of the worlds it is the loyal supporter of that Government. It has never taken pay from armed Despotism, or abetts persecution. It has fostered no Borgias; no stranglers or starvers to death of other Popes, like Boniface VII no poisoners, like Alexander VI. and Paul III. It has no roll of beatified Inquisitors or other murderers; as it has never, in any country, been the enemy of the people, the suppresser of scientific truth, the stifler of the God-given right of free inquiry as to the great problems, intellectual and spiritual, presented by the Universe, the extorter of confession by the rack, the burner of women and of the exhumed bodies of the dead. It has never been the enemy of the human race, and the curse and dread of Christendom. Its patron Saints have always been St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, and not Pedro Arbues d'Epila, Principal Inquisitor of Zaragoza, who, slain in 1485, was beatified by Alexander VII. in 1664.

 

It is not when the powers of the Papacy are concentrated to crush the Free-Masonry of the Latin Kingdoms and Republics of the world, that the Masons of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in the United States will, from any motive whatever, proclaim that they have no sympathy with the Masons of the Continent of Europe, or with those of Mexico or of the South American Republics. If these fall into errors of practice or indulge in extravagances of dogma, we will dissent and remonstrate; but we will not forget that the Free-Masonry of our Rite and of the French Rite has always been the Apostle of Civil and Religious Liberty, and that the blood of Spanish and other Latin FreeMasons has again and again glorified and sanctified the implements of torture, the scaffold and the stake, of the Papacy and the Inquisition.

 

Neither does Free-Masonry any more execrate the atrocities of the Papacy than it does those of Henry VIII. of England and his daughter Elizabeth, the murder of Sir Thomas More and that of Servetus, and those of the Quakers put to death by bigotry in New England; than the cruel torturing and slaying of Covenanters and Non-Conformists, the ferocities of Claverhouse and Kirk, and the pitiless slaughtering of Catholic Priests by the revolutionary fury of France.

 

It well knows and cheerfully acknowledges the services which some of the Roman Pontiffs and a multitude of its clergy have in the past centuries rendered to Humanity. It has always done ample justice to their pure lives, their good deeds, their self-denial, their devotedness, their unostentatious heroism, as these have been eloquently and beautifully portrayed by Kenelm Henry Digby. It has always done full justice to the memories of the faithful and devoted Missionaries of the Order of Jesus and others, who bore the Cross into every barbarous land under the sun, to make known to savages the truths and errors taught by the Roman Church, and the simpler arts of civilization. It was never the unreasoning and insensate reviler of that church, railing against it without measure or regard to justice and truth; nor could it be, remembering that lot only Bayard and Du Guesclin, but Sir Henry More, Las Casas and Fenelon were loyal servants of it.

 

But also it has known to its cost that none of the tages of the History of the World are more full of rightful crimes and monstrous acts of cruel outrage han those of the Papacy of Rome; and it now knows, by the revival of the Bulls of Benedict and Clement, that the seeming moderation, mildness and liberality of opinion of that Church have been but a mask, which, being torn from its face, its intolerant, persecuting, cruel, inhuman spirit flames out as ferociously as ever from its bloody eyes.

 

It seems to have learned nothing, and to be incapable of learning anything, although a higher will and a sterner law than its own have made it powerless to burn heretics, whether men or women, free-thinkers and Free-Masons, at the stake, or to extort confessions of guilt by torture; and permit it no longer to persecute science as heresy and blasphemy.

 

For surely if the age of the Papacy had brought with it a larger measure of wisdom, as men were fondly hoping, the present Pope would not, at this age of the world, have ordered every Catholic in every Republic in the world to become not only disloyal to but the irreconcilable enemy of the Government under which he lives.

 

Nor would the present Pope have re-enacted and made his own the Bulls of Benedict and Clement, or have pronounced against Catholics who persist in continuing to be Free-Masons, all the lesser and greater penalties ever prescribed by any of his predecessors. For (not to multiply appalling instances) he cannot be ignorant that, at the first auto da fe, ("Act of the Faith,") celebrated at Valladolid in Spain, on the 21st of May, 1559, and at the second even more solemn one, held in the same city in the presence of Philip II. himself, his son and sister, the Prince of Parma, and many Grandees and Nobles of Spain and high ladies of the Court and country, there were strangled and then burned, for the unpardonable sin of having become convinced of the truth of, and therefore having embraced, some of the opinions of Martin Luther, Dona Beatrix de Vibero Cazalla and nine other women, in presence of the audience; and at the first, the body of Dona Eleonora de Vibero, (who had been interred as a Catholic, without suspicion ever having been raised as to her orthodoxy, and when she had, in her last sickness, taken all the sacraments,) having been exhumed, was borne to the pyre on a bier, adorned with a San Benito of flames, the pasteboard mitre on its head, and so burned. Upon the confession extracted from some prisoners under the tortures, or by threats of torture, the Fiscal of the Inquisition had accused her, after her burial, of Lutheranism, for permitting her house to be used for Lutheran assemblings; whereupon she was adjudged by the beloved Tribunal of the Papacy to have died in heresy, her memory was condemned to infamy entailed on her posterity, and her property confiscated, her body ordered to be exhumed and burned, her house razed to the ground, and forbidden to be rebuilded, and a monument was ordered to be set up on the site with an inscription relating to this event.

 

Even the impudence of a Roman Catholic journalist will hardly venture to stigmatize this as false. It is related by Juan Antonio Llorente, in his "Critical History of the Inquisition in Spain," derived from original documents in the archives of the Supreme Tribunal and those of the Subterranean Tribunals of the Holy Office: from which came the statements contained in our "Reply" of the number of victims butchered by Torquemada and his successors. Llorente was ex-Secretary of the Inquisition of the Court, Canon of the Primatical Church of Toledo, Chancellor of the University of that city, Knight of the Order of Charles III., and member of the Royal Academies of History and of the Spanish Language at Madrid.

 

"All these dispositions" (of the judgment against the dead woman Eleonora) "were executed," Llorente says: "I have seen the place, the column and the inscriptions. It is stated that this monument of human ferocity against the dead was demolished in 1809."

 

But at these autos da fe the Archbishops and Bishops, clergy, nobles, and ladies present were not entirely deprived of the expected luxury and pleasure of seeing human creatures burned alive. At the first, Francisco de Vibero Cazalla and the Licentiate Antonio Herrezuelo, and at the second, Don Carlos de Seso and Juan Sanchez, were roasted alive for the mortal sin of Lutheranism. Of a score or two of suspected Lutherans and others, not burned alive, or strangled and then burned, all the property they possessed was confiscated to the uses of the Holy Office, a method of enriching itself which it had then pursued with great diligence, by continual confiscations, for eighty years, and yet was not weary.

 

At the second, Dona Marina de Guevara, a Nun, accused of Lutheranism, suffered. The Supreme Tribunal decreed that she was guilty, and had incurred the penalty of the greater excommunication, and "remitted" her "to the judicial power and to the secular arm" of the Corregidor and his Lieutenant, "to whom," the judgment said, "we recommend to treat her with kindness and pity," that Tribunal knowing that sentence of death must inevitably and necessarily follow, and that its own judgment was really the death-sentence. If the Corregidor had dared to mitigate the penalty, he would himself have felt fastened into his flesh the sharp and venornous fangs of the Inquisition, for he would have proven himself a favourer of heretics. What a hideous formula was that recommendation to kindness and pity! "It is impossible," Llorente says, "to impose on God by formulas contrary to the secret dispositions of the heart."

 

"Since the Inquisition was established," Llorente wrote in 1817, "there has hardly been a man celebrated for his knowledge who has not been persecuted as a heretic"; and he gives a formidable list of those who suffered in their liberty, honour and fortune "because they would not shamefully adopt scholastic opinions or erroneous systems born in the ages of ignorance and of barbarism."

 

Certainly the restoration of this convenient instrument of the Apostolic See, which acts on anonymous denunciations, takes testimony ex parte upon such denunciations, and convicts on suspicions, and confessions extorted by an admirable variety of tortures, and even upon persistent refusals to confess, is not impossible; because, on the 21st of July, 1814, Ferdinand VII. reestablished it in Spain, after Bonaparte had suppressed it in 1808, and the Cortes-General Extraordinary of Spain had done the same on the 12th of February, 1813. (1)

 

The time may even come again, if Constitutional Government can be destroyed by the Papacy in Spain, Portugal or Italy, when that may happen to a FreeMason, which happened to Gaspardo de Santa Cruz and his son under Ferdinand and Isabella, about the year 1487. The father had taken refuge at Toulouse, in France, where he died, after he had been burned in effigy at Zaragoza. One of his sons was arrested by order of the Inquisitors for having aided the escape of his father. He underwent the punishment of the public auto da fe, and was condemned to take a copy of the judgment rendered against his father, to go to Toulouse and present this copy to the Dominicans, demanding that his father's body should be exhumed and burned; and, finally, to return to Zaragoza and make report to the Inquisitors of the execution of the sentence. And to this shameful, revolting, and monstrous judgment he submitted without murmuring, and executed it.

 

In 1524 (Charles V. being then Emperor of the Romans) there was put up, in the Inquisition at Sevilla, by the Licentiate de la Cueva, by the order and at the cost of the Emperor, an inscription in Latin, composed by Diego de Cortegana, by which it was stated that, from the time of the establishment of the Inquisition there, in 1485, under the Pontificate of Sextus IV. and during the reign of Ferdinand V. and Isabella, until 1524, "more than two thousand persons obstinate in heresy had been delivered to the flames, after having been judged conformably to law, with the approbation and favour of Innocent VIII., Alexander VI., Pius III., Julius II., Leo X., Adrian VI., and Clement VII."

 

The Church of Rome had prepared and matured all its plans of campaign against liberal institutions and Constitutional Government, carefully, thoroughly, and comprehensively, before the Encyclical Letter "Humanum Genus" gave the signal for opening the campaign and commencing the new crusade, to endanger the peace of the world, foment anarchy, and initiate a new era of violence and murder. A clerical victory at the elections in Belgium has been followed by the enactment of a law destructive of the commonschool system, and placing education under the control of the Priests and Jesuits. It will not disturb the Pope or his Cardinal-Princes if civil war results, as now seems probable, if thousands of lives are sacrificed, if the King loses his throne, and the Kingdom of Belgium is obliterated. In Spain the Romish clergy have set on foot a demonstration in every Church throughout the realm in favour of the temporal power of the Pope; and if Alfonso does not place himself unreservedly in the hands and at the bidding of the Church, revolutionary movements against his throne, already beginning to appear in the north of Spain, will be fomented. The Pope promulgates an Encyclical Letter against the adoption of a new law of divorce by the legislative power of France, and instructs the Bishops to annul it so far as they may find it possible. And we may look for disturbances in Mexico and the South American States, fomented by the Priesthood in obedience to the orders issued from the Vatican against Free-Masons and Constitutional Government.

 

By Papal Brief of January 17, 1750, the Father Joseph Torrubia, Pro-Censor and Reviser of the Inquisition, was authorized to procure initiation into Masonry, to take all the oaths that might be required of him, and to use every means possible to acquire the most complete knowledge of the membership of the Free-Masonry of Spain: and in March, 1751, the Father Torrubia, having taken without sinfulness the oaths required, and been initiated, put into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor the ninety-seven lists of membership of the ninety-seven Lodges at that time in activity in Spain: upon which, on the 2d of July, 1751, the King, Ferdinand VI., decreed the complete suppression of the Masonic Order, and prescribed the punishment of death, without any form of preliminary procedure, against all who should be convicted of belonging to it.

 

Undoubtedly Pope Leo XIII. would consider it laudable for any good Catholic now, if need were, to imitate the example of the Father Joseph Torrubia; and entirely proper for himself to grant such a brief as was granted to that worthy Father; although all honest men ought to regard such a service as base and infamous, and consider perjury and betrayal of confidence to be virtues only in the eyes of the Church and not in those of God.

 

But his Apostolic Holiness has graciously permitted that during one year, those who in obedience to his orders renounce Masonry, shall not be required to divulge the names of their superiors in the Order; not because to do so would be unutterable baseness, but because it is politic, as likely to induce many to renounce the Order, who would not be willing to do that and at the same time become faithless and perjured scoundrels.

 

While inciting the fanatical and venal instruments of his Priesthood against Free-Masonry and Constitutional Government, the Pope omits nothing to make more effectual his edict of Excommunication. It is necessary to give assurance to those who may help in the good work of exterminating Free-Masonry, overturning Constitutional Government, and re-enslaving intellects, souls and science, of immunity, if not in this world, then certainly in the next, for all the outrages, villainies and crimes that they may commit.

 

Accordingly the Pope embraces the present occasion, while he is causing disturbances in Belgium, Spain, Mexico and Italy, to issue his proclamation, as Spiritual Autocrat of the whole world, panoplied with all the powers of the Almighty God, by which he plenarily pardons all the sins of a great number of the faithful, neither knowing nor caring what the enormity of those sins may be.

 

The paragraphs which follow, taken from a translation in the Catholic Examiner of Brooklyn, of the Encyclical Letter of Leo XIII., of August 30, 1884, "setting apart October as a month of prayer to the Mother of God," will show that we do not misunderstand the use to which the Pope puts his plenary indulgences:

 

"For it is, indeed, an arduous and exceedingly weighty matter that is now in hand; it is to humiliate an old and most subtle enemy in the spread-out array of his power; to win back the freedom of the Church and of her Head; to preserve and secure the fortifications within which should rest in peace the safety and weal of human society.

 

* * * * * * *

 

"That the heavenly treasures of the Church may be thrown open to all, we hereby renew every indulgence granted by us last year. To all those, therefore, who shall have assisted on the prescribed days at the public recital of the Rosary, and have prayed for our intentions, to all those also, who from legitimate causes shall have been compelled to do so in private, we grant for each occasion an indulgence of seven years and seven times forty days. To those who in the prescribed space of time, shall have performed these devotions at least ten times either publicly in the churches or from just causes in the privacy of their homes and shall have expiated their sins by confession and have received communion at the altar, we grant from the treasury of the Church a plenary indulgence. We also grant this full forgiveness of sins and plenary remission of punishment to all those who, either on the feast-day itself of our Blessed Lady of the Rosary, or on any day within the subsequent eight days, shall have washed the stains from their souls and have holily partaken of the Divine banquet, and shall have also prayed in any church to God and His holy Mother for our intentions."

 

What these "intentions" are, the Letter Humanum Genus does not permit the world to doubt. And in the latest Encyclical Letter, granting absolutions in advance, they are expressed in this sentence:

 

"May our Heavenly Patroness, invoked by us through the Rosary, graciously be with us and obtain that, all disagreements of opinion being removed and Christianity restored through the world, we may obtain from God the wished for peace in the Church."

 

It is also proclaimed that another letter is about to be issued which will cause a profound sensation in the Catholic world, in which the Pope is to expound to his vassals his opinions in regard to civil government. He cannot make them much more plain than he has already made them; but it is not probable that his lofty intentions will be in any degree abated. He has already proclaimed war against Protestantism, free education, and constitutional restraints upon arbitrary power; and he will continue to do so more and more emphatically and offensively, until not only the rulers of Protestant countries, but all, wherever constitutional government exists, will find themselves compelled to declare the Papacy the malignant disturber of the peace of the world, and to unite in measures to curb its arrogance and deprive it of the power of making mischief and of its cherished prerogative of being the curse and the terror of the world.

 

* * *

 

Free-Masonry makes no war upon the Roman Catholic religion. To do this is impossible for it, because it has never ceased to proclaim its cardinal tenets to be the most perfect and absolute equality of right of free opinion in matters of faith and creed. It denies the right of one Faith to tolerate another. To tolerate is to permit; and to permit is to refrain from prohibiting or preventing; and so a right to tolerate would imply a right to forbid. If there be a right to tolerate, every Faith has it alike. One is in no wise, in the eye of Masonry, superior to the other; and of two opposing faiths each cannot be superior to the other, nor can each tolerate the other.

 

Rome does claim the right to prohibit, precisely now as she always did. she is never tolerant except upon compulsion. And Masonry, having nothing to say as to her religious tenets, denies her right to interfere with the free exercise of opinion.

 

It will be said that the English-speaking FreeMasonry will not receive Catholics into its bosom. That is not true. It will not receive Jesuits, because no oath that it can administer would bind the conscience of a Jesuit; and it refuses also to receive atheists; not denying their perfect right to be atheists, but declining to accept them for associates, because Masonry recognizes a Supreme Will, Wisdom and Power, a God, who is a protecting Providence, and to whom it is not folly to pray; and Who has not made persecution a religious duty, nor savage cruelty and blood- guiltiness a passport to Paradise.

 

(1) In the Gaceta of the Spanish Government, No. of date 23d February, 1826, the execution of a person accused of Masonry is thus referred to:

 

"Yesterday was hung in this city Antonio Caso, (alias) Jaramalla: he died impenitent, and leaving in consternation the numerous concourse which were present at the spectacle; a terrible whirlwind making it more horrible, which took place while this criminal was expiring, who came forth from the prison blaspheming, speaking such words as may not be repeated without shame, and although gagged he repeated as well as he could, 'Viva mi Seeta ! Viva la Institucion Masonica!" so he was dragged by the tail of a horse to the scaffold. Notwithstanding the efforts which Priests of all classes had made, they had not been able to induce him to pronounce the name of Jesus and Mary. After he was dead, his right hand was cut off, and dragging his body they took it to a dung-heap. Thus do these proclaimers of liberty miserably end their lives; and this is the felicity which they promise to those who follow them, - to go to abide where the beasts do."

 

----o----

 

DR. GEORGE OLIVER

 

BY BRO. DUDLEY WRIGHT, ASSISTANT EDITOR "THE LONDON FREEMASON," ENGLAND

 

TARDY RECOGNITION of the great services rendered to the Craft by a great veteran of past ages has at late length been meted out by the dedication of Lodge No. 3964, Peterborough, England, to the worthy name of "Dr. Oliver." The announcement has been received with gratification by all Masonic students, for it was in the city of Peterborough, in 1801, that the famous Masonic historian, Dr. George Oliver, was initiated in the St. Peter's Lodge, now No. 442, at the age of eighteen, by special dispensation.

 

He was descended from an ancient Scottish family of that name, and was the eldest son of the Rev. Samuel Oliver, Rector of Lambley, Notts., and was born on 5th November, 1782. He is sometimes confused with the Rev. George Oliver, D. D., the Roman Catholic divine and historian of Exeter, who was born in 1781 and died in 1861 who was also a renowned historian. Some members of the Masonic historian's family came to England in the reign of James I and subsequently settled at Clipstone Park, Notts.

 

In 1803, having only just attained his majority, he was appointed Second Master of Caistor Grammar School, and in the same year was advanced to the Mark Degree. In 1809, he became Head Master of Grimsby Grammar School and founded the Apollo Lodge at Grimsby, of which he was Worshipful Master for fourteen years, it being then not uncommon for the office to be held for a number of years. On 25th April, 1812, he laid the first stone of a Masonic Hall in a town where, previous to his advent, there was scarcely a representative of the Craft. In 1813, he was exalted to Royal Arch Masonry in the Chapter attached to the Rodney Lodge, Kingston-upon- Hull. In the same year he was ordained Deacon, becoming Priest (Episcopalian) in the following year. 1814 also saw him accepting office in the Provincial Grand Lodge as Steward, being advanced to Provincial Grand Chaplain in 1816. In 1814, also, he was presented to the living of Clee by Bishop Tomline. In 1815 he became a member of the Ancient and Accepted Rite and shortly afterwards he began his career as a Masonic author, publishing, in 1820 his celebrated "Antiquities of Freemasonry," which was followed immediately afterwards by "The Star in the East." In 1826 he published "Signs and Symbols" and the "History of Initiation," and, in 1829, he edited a new edition of Preston's "Illustrations of Masonry." During all this time he was attending to his important duties of Head Master of the Grammar School and had under his pastoral charges two parishes, one being very populous. In 1831, Bishop Kaye of Lincoln presented him to the living of Scopwick, which he held until his death in 1867. In 1834 the Dean of Windsor gave him the Rectory of Wolverhampton and a prebend in the Collegiate Church. He had previously been appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master of Lincolnshire, an office which he held for nine years. In 1835 the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1838, he joined the Witham Lodge at Lincoln, No. 297, of which he wrote the history. In 1842 he delivered an oration on the occasion of the dedication of the Masonic Hall, Saltergate, when there were present his father, son, and two grandsons four generations of Freemasons in one family.

 

The Masonic presentations to him were many. In 1839 the Witham Lodge presented him with a handsome silver salver and the Apollo Lodge with a handsome gold jewel, and in 1844 he was the recipient of a splendid testimonial consisting of a silver cup and service of Plate contributed to by Freemasons in all parts of the world. In 1862, the Rising Star Lodge, Bombay, presented him with a massive silver medal on the front of which was a design representing two native Freemasons, one on each side of an altar, in Masonic regalia and bearing wands and Masonic symbols. On the reverse was a portrait of the founder of the lodge. He became a member of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite in 1845 and in the same year was appointed Lieutenant Grand Commander of that Order, being advanced in 1850 to the highest dignity, that of Most Puissant Sovereign Grand Commander. In 1846 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts conferred upon him the honorary rank of Deputy Grand Master.

 

In 1854 his voice began to fail and, confiding the care of his parishes to curates, he passed the remainder of his life in seclusion at Lincoln, where he died on 3rd March, 1867, and where he was buried on the 7th of that month in St. Swithin's Cemetery.

 

His works, in addition to those already enumerated, were "A Dictionary of Symbolical Masonry," "Book of the Lodge," "The Symbol of Glory," "The History of Freemasonry from 1829 to 1841," "A Mirror for the Johannite Mason," "The Revelations of a Square," "Theocratic Philosophy of Freemasonry," "Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry" (two vols.), "Insignia of the Royal Arch," "Masonic Jurisprudence," "Treasury of Freemasonry," "History and Antiquity of the Collegiate Church of Beverley," "History and Antiquity of the Collegiate Church of Wolverhampton," "History of the Conventual Church of Grimsby," "Monumental Antiquities of Grimsby," "History of the Guild of Holy Trinity, Sleaford," "Six Pastoral Addresses to the Inhabitants of Grimsby," "Farewell Address to the Inhabitants of Grimsby," "Three Addresses to the Inhabitants of Wolverhampton," "Hints on Educational Societies," "Essays on Education," "Six Letters on the Liturgy," "Letter on Church Principles," "Letter on Doctrine," "Eighteen Sermons preached at Wolverhampton," "Monasteries on the Eastern Side of the Witham," "Druidical Remains near Lincoln," "Guide to the Druidical Temple at Nottingham," "British Antiquities in Nottingham and vicinity," "Remains of Ancient Britons between Lincoln and Sleaford," "Ye Byrde of Gryme."

 

He was a bright exemplar and clear expositor of the true principles of Freemasonry, who has had but few parallels. His name was, and is, a household word in the Craft, and his fame still lives. In his writings he has left a rich and enduring legacy. Immediately after his initiation he began to study the science of Freemasonry in an earnest and industrious spirit, unparalleled in the annals of the Craft in England and America. He delivered his last lecture in the Witham Lodge, Lincoln, in 1863, when in his eighty-first year, and his enthusiasm was then unabated. No more forceful tribute can be paid to his memory than was written on the occasion of his lamented death:

 

"His was the pen, not only of a ready writer, but of one who was capable of illustrating abstruse and recondite matters, and presenting them in a perspicuous and pleasing manner. His aim was to elevate the Order, which he took so closely to his heart, by informing its members, by explaining its observances, ceremonial, and ritual, and by placing it on a firmer and more philanthropic, rational, and religious basis, and he consequently for some years past has been an authority to the Masonic student. He also firmly but kindly inculcated the precepts of temperance, fortitude, justice, and brotherly love, which are indissolubly bound up with the tenets of the Institution, but which were, and still are, too frequently overlooked. He sought to explain the moral and practical tendency of Masonic symbols and teaching. It is somewhat remarkable that the Masonic works of the learned Doctor are all parts of a system he conceived when practically a young man, a plan or scheme intended to demonstrate the capabilities of Freemasonry as a literary institution."

 

The achievements of the Rev. Dr. George Oliver are not to be reckoned by the number of lodges to which he belonged, or the offices which he held, although here his record was a worthy one. Rather was his influence felt by all who read Masonic literature and study the esoteric meaning of Masonic ceremony and ritual. It was in his lectures to the brethren of his day that he became specially revered. It is in the written word he has left behind him that he is endeared to all Masonic students of the present day, and will, indeed, be appraised by the students of all time.

 

When he received the testimonial in 1844, to which reference has already been made, he delivered one of his striking orations, which was practically a summary of his life's work and aim. He spoke as follows:

 

"When I was first initiated into Masonry, about the year 1801, I resided at a distance of more than twenty miles from the lodge; and as facilities for communication between one place and another were not so great then as they are now, it may reasonably be presumed that I was not very regular in my attendance on the duties of the lodge. I possessed, however, the advantage of instruction in the lectures from a very intelligent Master, and I prosecuted the inquiries with great diligence and, I may add, with great success, although I was then little more than eighteen years of age. I soon became acquainted with the mechanism of the Order, for the details were very simple, and the lectures, as usually delivered, exceedingly short and commonplace. On inquiry, I found that the lectures were, in reality, much more comprehensive; and that they embraced a more extensive view of the morals and science of the Order than was contained in the meagre portions which were periodically doled out to the brethren in country lodges. In fact, at that time, I am afraid a majority of the brethren thought more of the convivialities than the science of Freemasonry On a mature consideration, I felt that this could not be the chief design of Freemasonry; but a change of situation about that time, and being removed to a distance from my Masonic instructor, drove Freemasonry entirely out of my head for a period of seven years. At the end of this time I found myself in a position to establish a new lodge; and I accordingly established the Apollo Lodge at Grimsby, and was appointed its first Worshipful Master. Here, then, I had an opportunity of bringing into operation those improvements which had suggested themselves to my mind many years before, and during the time that I presided over that lodge I flatter myself it was decently conducted. I am sure it was pre-eminently successful. Still, I could not divest myself of the idea that Freemasonry contained some further reference than what appeared upon the face of the lectures, even in their most extended form. But of the nature of that reference I was perfectly ignorant. I communicated with my Masonic instructor on the subject, but he was equally at a loss. I consulted other eminent Masons without success. I remained in this state of doubt and indecision for several years; when, at length, an unforeseen accident put me in possession of all the information I wanted. It was about the time when the Union was making a noise in the world in 1813 or 1814; a numerous or flourishing lodge, with which I was in the habit of occasional communication, appointed a committee to revise the lectures, for the purpose of making them palatable to all the brethren. Amongst the members of the lodge were several Jewish Masons, and they possessed sufficient influence to direct the Committee to withdraw from the lectures every reference to Christianity. The attempt was rash; because, if it had succeeded the ancient landmarks of the Order would not only have been removed, but actually destroyed. The committee entered on the work with great zeal and perseverance; but, as they proceeded, unforeseen obstacles impeded their progress. They complained that on a minute analysation of the lectures they found them so full of types and references to Christianity that they could not strike them out without reducing the noble system to a mere skeleton, unpossessed of either wisdom, strength or beauty. After mature deliberation, they unanimously resolved to abandon the undertaking; and pronounced it hopeless and impracticable. This experiment, which I watched with great attention, opened my eyes to the important force that Freemasonry is capable of being made, not only more extensively useful, but of great actual value to the moral and religious institutions of the country. I deliberated long on the most feasible method of bringing the Order before the world as an institution in which Christianity was imbedded and morals and religion incorporated with scientific attainments; and without the remotest idea that I was to be the instrument for its development. It is true I instituted a direct search into Masonic facts; I penetrated into the dark and abstruse origin of Masonic inequalities; and the further I advanced in my inquiries the more I became convinced of the absolute necessity of some systematic attempt to identify Freemasonry with the religious institutions of ancient nations, as typical of the universal religion of Christ.

 

"Before I conclude I shall take the opportunity of laying before you a brief sketch of my connection with the Provincial Grand Lodge of Lincolnshire. I have already said that I was initiated a minor, and have made a few observations on my Masonic feelings at that period. But it was not until the year 1813 that I attained Provincial rank. In that year Provincial Grand Master Peters made me a present of the Steward's Apron. Three years afterwards his successor, Provincial Grand Master White, appointed me to the office of Provincial Grand Chaplain, and I preached my first sermon before the Provincial Grand Lodge at Barton-upon-Humber. The next Provincial Grand Lodge was held at Spalding in 1818, about which time I was taken into the counsels of Brother Barnett, Deputy Provincial Grand Master, and the sole manager of Masonry in that county; for neither Provincial Master Peters nor his successor held a Provincial Grand Lodge in my time. Brother Barnett never convened a Provincial Grand Lodge or took any step in the execution of his office without consulting me, although he did not always follow my advice. It was, however, through my recommendation that annual Provincial Grand Lodges were brought into operation; and they were carried on with tolerable regularity until the appointment of the present Provincial Grand Master.

 

"Thus a Provincial Grand Lodge was held at Lincoln in 1820, at Sleaford in 1821, and at Grantham in 1822. Owing to the increasing infirmities of Brother Barnett, these interesting meetings were obliged to be temporarily suspended; and it was not until the year 1825 that the Deputy Provincial Grand Master found himself capable of convening another Provincial Grand Lodge. It was holden at Boston on the petition of the brethren of the Lodge of Harmony. About this time Brother D'Eyncourt was appointed to the office of Provincial Grand Master; and, owing to circumstances which he was probably unable to control, no Provincial Grand Lodge was convened for seven years. During this inauspicious period Freemasonry declined so much that there was scarcely an efficient lodge in the Province. The St. Matthew's Lodge at Barton, the Doric at Grantham, the Apollo at Grimsby, and the Hope at Sleaford, had entirely discontinued their meetings; and even the Witham at Lincoln and the Lodge of Harmony at Boston were extremely feeble. At length the Provincial Grand Master saw the necessity of doing something, and accordingly he convened a Provincial Grand Lodge at Lincoln in 1832, and another at Horncastle in the following year, at which my Deputation was confirmed by patent. Thenceforward mine was a forced interference and I set myself seriously to the work of regenerating Masonry in the Province. And the process I adopted was this: The Provincial Grand Officers had been continued for years, which constituted the chief ground of complaint. I determined to reform this abuse. I then framed a code of by-laws for the government of Masonry in the Province. I frequently held two Provincial Grand Lodges in the year, although I resided, for a great length of time, a hundred miles out of the province. I advanced active and intelligent brethren to the purple; I distributed honours with impartiality, and, I trust, with a strict regard to justice; and instituted an inquiry into the state of the lodges, and introduced a discipline which operated so effectually as not only to revive most of the lodges but to cause new ones to spring up in every part of the Province. During the progress of these measures for the purification of the Order, I assure you, brethren, most solemnly, that I never sought for popularity at the expense of principle; I never sought for popularity by the infringement of any Masonic law or a dereliction of any Masonic duty. In a word, I never thought of popularity; I thought only of the strict and conscientious discharge of my duty. I flatter myself that I improved the details of Masonry in the Province. I remodelled the ceremonial of the induction and departure of the Provincial Grand Master in Provincial Grand Lodge, which had been very loosely and inefficiently conducted before my time. I re-arranged the order of public processions; so that regularity and decorum succeeded carelessness and disorder, and, I am happy to add, that other Provinces have adopted my arrangements. Thus, Masonry became respected; and, instead of continuing to be a byeword and a reproach, it is now considered a title of distinction. It is more than thirty years since my connection with the Provincial Grand Lodge of Lincolnshire commenced. During the whole of that period Freemasonry has been my constant and unremitting care. Expense has not been spared, and much personal inconvenience has been sustained for the benefit of the Craft. I have had no common feeling on the subject. It has been a kind of monomania, which I have never endeavoured to suppress. The time has at length arrived when I feel myself called upon, by years and infirmities, to bid adieu to practical Freemasonry. You have this day pronounced that I have discharged my duty, during my official rule, like a good and worthy Mason; I shall therefore have the satisfaction of retiring from the scene assured of your approbation. I confess it is painful to sever a link which has cemented me to the Craft for so many happy years; and to mitigate my regret I must throw myself on your indulgence. Your approbation of what I have done will hallow the remembrance of our connection. Our Masonic union has ceased, and we regard each other only in the light of private friends. To the subscribers of the offering my thanks and gratitude are peculiarly due; and to withhold them on the present occasion would be of violence to my feelings. For more than forty years I have been a labourer in the forest, the quarry, and the mountain, for the advancement of the Order. Your sympathy and approbation have well rewarded my toil, although I have borne the heat and burden of the day.

 

"But I fatigue you. I confess, that the very idea of a last word and that word, Farewell, to brethren with whom I have acted so long and so cordially  whose zeal has given instant effect to all my plans and all my wishes is exceedingly bitter and painful. But my Masonic course is nearly run. I have told you how I began; I have told you how I continued; I have no occasion to tell you, for you all know too well, how I ended. There are many brethren present whom, it is highly probable, I may never see again in this world. But there is another and a better. There I trust we shall all meet, never to part again. There, amidst the Masons of heaven's high arch, we may practice our system of universal love, and rejoice in the blessings of unadulterated Masonry for ever and ever. Brethren, farewell, and may God be with you."

 

The cup with which Dr. Oliver was presented was of exquisite workmanship. The body was embossed with cherubs' heads and festoons of roses; the cover and summit with emblems of corn and acacia; the cover was surmounted with a double triangle, and the F. P. O. F. intersecting at right angles. On one side of the cup was an inscription in Latin and on the other with the arms of Dr. Oliver, from which depended the emblem of the Past Provincial Deputy Grand Master, viz.,

 

E. R. on a chief sa.; three lions rampant of the first. EST, a demi-lion rampant erased er; collared and ringed ar.

 

The inscription on the Cup was as follows:

 

"Part of a Service of Plate presented by his Brother Masons to the Reverend and V. W. Dr. Oliver, P. P. D. G. M. for Lancashire, etc., etc., etc., by the W. M. of the Witham Lodge, No. 374, A. D. 1844, May 9th, A. L. 5844.

 

"To George Oliver, Doctor in Divinity, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Edinburgh; Vicar of Scopwick, Incumbent of Wolverhampton; lately in the county of Lincoln, of Freemasons Deputy Grand Master; also of the Witham Lodge, 374, a member and Chaplain; a philosopher and archaeologian second to none; in historical subjects most learned; an Orator whether in the Church or in our Councils, of the modestic union founded in brotherly love, relief, and truth, for forty years the most ardent exponent to brethren, of reverence incessantly most worthy; a brother throughout the whole surface of the earth celebrated the rites of Freemasons; for the sake both of honour and of love, they give this offering. A. D. 1844; A. L. 5844."

 

It is truly fitting that the brethren of today should seek to preserve on the Register of the United Grand Lodge of England the name of a brother who will for ever be honoured in the annals of the Craft of Freemasonry.

 

----o----

 

When I am dead, if men can say,

"He helped the world upon its way;

With all his faults of word and deed

Mankind did have some little need

Of what he gave" - then in my grave

No greater honor shall I crave.

 

If they can say - if they but can -

"He did his best; he played the man;

His way was straight; his soul was clean;

His failings not unkind, nor mean;

He loved his fellow men and tried

To help them" - I'll be satisfied.

 

But when I'm gone, if even one

Can weep because my life is done,

And feel the world is something bare

Because I am no longer there;

Call me a knave, my life misspent -

No matter, I shall be content.

 

Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through the cypress trees;

Who, helpless, lays his dead away,

Nor looks to see the breaking day

Across the mournful marbles play!

Who hath not learned in hours of faith

The truth of flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own.

 

- Whittier.

 

----o----

 

The moderation of fortunate people comes from the calm which good fortune gives to their tempers. - La Rochefoucauld.

 

----o----

 

CORRESPONDENCE CIRCLE BULLETIN NO. 33

 

Edited by Bro. H. L. Haywood

 

THE BULLETIN COURSE OF MASONIC STUDY FOR MONTHLY LODGE MEETINGS AND

STUDY CLUBS

 

FOUNDATION OF THE COURSE

 

THE Course of Study has for its foundation two sources of Masonic information: THE BUILDER and Mackey's Encyclopedia. In another paragraph is explained how the references to former issues of THE BUILDER and to Mackey's Encyclopedia may be worked up as supplemental papers to exactly fit into each installment of the Course with the papers by Brother Haywood.

 

MAIN OUTLINE:

 

The Course is divided into five principal divisions which are in turn subdivided, as is shown below:

 

Division I. Ceremonial Masonry.

 

A. The Work of the Lodge.

B. The Lodge and the Candidate.

C. First Steps.

D. Second Steps.

E. Third Steps.

 

Division II. Symbolical Masonry.

A. Clothing.

B. Working Tools.

C. Furniture.

D. Architecture.

E. Geometry.

F. Signs.

G. Words.

H. Grips.

 

Division III. Philosophical Masonry.

A. Foundations.

B. Virtues.

C. Ethics.

D. Religious Aspect.

E. The Quest.

F. Mysticism.

G. The Secret Doctrine.

 

Division IV. Legislative Masonry.

 

A. The Grand Lodge.

1. Ancient Constitutions.

2. Codes of Law.

3. Grand Lodge Practices.

4. Relationship to Constituent Lodges.

5. Official Duties and Prerogatives.

 

B. The Constituent Lodge.

1. Organization.

2. Qualifications of Candidates.

3. Initiation, Passing and Raising.

4. Visitation.

5. Change of Membership.

 

Division V. Historical Masonry.

 

A. The Mysteries--Earliest Masonic Light.

B. Studies of Rites--Masonry in the Making.

C. Contributions to Lodge Characteristics.

D. National Masonry.

E. Parallel Peculiarities in Lodge Study.

F. Feminine Masonry.

G. Masonic Alphabets.

H. Historical Manuscripts of the Craft.

I. Biographical Masonry.

J. Philological Masonry--Study of Significant Words.

 

THE MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS

 

Each month we are presenting a paper written by Brother Haywood, who is following the foregoing outline. We are now in "First Steps" of Ceremonial Masonry. There will be twelve monthly papers under this particular subdivision. On page two, preceding each installment, will be given a list of questions to be used by the chairman of the Committee during the study period which will bring out every point touched upon in the paper.

 

Whenever possible we shall reprint in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin articles from other sources which have a direct bearing upon the particular subject covered by Brother Haywood in his monthly paper. These articles should be used as supplemental papers in addition to those prepared by the members from the monthly list of references. Much valuable material that would otherwise possibly never come to the attention of many of our members will thus be presented.

 

The monthly installments of the Course appearing in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin should be used one month later than their appearance. If this is done the Committee will have opportunity to arrange their programs several weeks in advance of the meetings and the brethren who are members of the National Masonic Research Society will be better enabled to enter into the discussions after they have read over and studied the installment in THE BUILDER.

 

REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTAL PAPERS

 

Immediately preceding each of Brother Haywood's monthly papers in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin will be found a list of references to THE BUILDER and Mackey's Encyclopedia. These references are pertinent to the paper and will either enlarge upon many of the points touched upon or bring out new points for reading and discussion. They should be assigned by the Committee to different brethren who may compile papers of their own from the material thus to be found, or in many instances the articles themselves or extracts therefrom may be read directly from the originals. The latter method may be followed when the members may not feel able to compile original papers, or when the original may be deemed appropriate without any alterations or additions.

 

HOW TO ORGANIZE FOR AND CONDUCT THE STUDY MEETINGS

 

The lodge should select a "Research Committee" preferably of three "live" members. The study meetings should be held once a month, either at a special meeting of the lodge called for the purpose, or at a regular meeting at which no business (except the lodge routine) should be transacted--all possible time to be given to the study period.

 

After the lodge has been opened and all routine business disposed of, the Master should turn the lodge over to the Chairman of the Research Committee. This Committee should be fully prepared in advance on the subject for the evening. All members to whom references for supplemental papers have been assigned should be prepared with their papers and should also have a comprehensive grasp of Brother Haywood's paper.

 

PROGRAM FOR STUDY MEETINGS

 

1. Reading of the first section of Brother Haywood's paper and the supplemental papers thereto.

 

(Suggestion: While these papers are being read the members of the lodge should make notes of any points they may wish to discuss or inquire into when the discussion is opened. Tabs or slips of paper similar to those used in elections should be distributed among the members for this purpose at the opening of the study period.)

 

2. Discussion of the above.

 

3. The subsequent sections of Brother Haywood's paper and the supplemental papers should then be taken up, one at a time, and disposed of in the same manner. 4. Question Box.

 

MAKE THE "QUESTION BOX" THE FEATURE OF YOUR MEETINGS

 

Invite questions from any and all brethren present. Let them understand that these meetings are for their particular benefit and get them into the habit of asking all the questions they may think of. Every one of the papers read will suggest questions as to facts and meanings which may not perhaps be actually covered at all in the paper. If at the time these questions are propounded no one can answer them, SEND THEM IN TO US. All the reference material we have will be gone through in an endeavor to supply a satisfactory answer. In fact we are prepared to make special research when called upon, and will usually be able to give answers within a day or two. Please remember, too, that the great Library of the Grand Lodge of Iowa is only a few miles away, and, by order of the Trustees of the Grand Lodge, the Grand Secretary places it at our disposal on any query raised by any member of the Society.

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

 

The foregoing information should enable local Committees to conduct their lodge study meetings with success. However, we shall welcome all inquiries and communications from interested brethren concerning any phase of the plan that is not entirely clear to them, and the Services of our Study Club Department are at the command of our members, lodge and study club committees at all times.

 

QUESTIONS ON "BUILDERS AND BUILDING TOOLS"

 

I Why, do you suppose, were so many allusions to the art of Architecture incorporated in our ritual and monitorial lectures? (The study club leader should ask for the individual opinions of a number of the brethren present on this subject at the opening of the discussion and note the variety of ideas advanced.) What was Preston's idea in the formation of the Second degree lecture? What advantage has the boy or man of our day over the Masons of Preston's time ?

 

II What is Morris' definition of Architecture ? Is a structure erected with a view of catering to physical needs only worthy of being designated as "architecture" ?

 

Is Morris' definition borne out by facts ?

 

What do the Parthenon and the colonnades at Thebes tell us? What part did art play in the Middle Ages?

 

III To what have the buildings of men always had a reference ? What is the story of the Tower of Babel ?

 

What is the secret of Masonry's use of architecture? How are Masons at present interested in building ? Is the use of builder's tools as symbols of modern origin ? Is such symbolism to be found in the bible ? Can you quote illustrators ? Are similes in use at the present day ? Name some of them. In what sense do we usually speak of a "builder"? a destroyer? Is there a connection between the present-day mission of Masonry and the language of architecture ? From what Source do we derive our Masonic institution of the present day?

 

Is a Mason an "architect" ? Why ? What manner of a structure is each individual Mason engaged in building?

 

Do you agree with Brother Haywood's assertion that Masonry is a "world-builder" ? If so, why ? If not, why not ? When will Masonry's work be completed?

 

IV What part of the ceremonies or lectures most impressed you on the night you took your Second degree? (The study club leader should propound this question to a number of the brethren successively try to get an expression from everyone present.) How were you impressed by the lecture on the "Five Senses" ? How have you expressed or carried out your impressions ? Have you ever given the matter any further thought ? Have you "Mason-ized" your Five Senses?

 

V What thought have you gained from Brother Haywood's short discourse on the part played by the senses in a man's life ? What is the underlying idea of the series of paintings in the Congressional Library at Washington mentioned by Brother Haywood ?

 

In what direction should our senses be trained ?

 

VI How does Brother Haywood interpret the sense of feeling? the sense of tasting? the sense of smelling? the sense of hearing? the sense of seeing?

 

Can you give a different interpretation of any or all of these senses?

 

VII What important lesson has Brother Haywood endeavored to emphasize in the present study paper? What new understandings have you gained from the foregoing discussions ?

 

SECOND STEPS

 

BY BRO. H. L. HAYWOOD, IOWA

 

PART VIII BUILDERS AND BUILDING TOOLS

 

I

 

IN THE November Correspondence Circle Bulletin I interpreted the group of five steps as alluding to the five senses, as the Monitorial lectures suggest; but these same lectures also make the five steps to allude to the Five Orders of Architecture, and it is to this that we must now devote our attention. In so doing we must remember that Preston's great idea in the formation of the lectures just here was to give to the candidate certain useful information which the average man of that day was unable to get elsewhere; in our times such matters are taught in the public schools and a man does not go to lodge for instruction. Besides, some recent critics have heaped ridicule on this lecture because the division of architecture into five orders is no longer countenanced by architects themselves; be that as it may, we need not quarrel over details, for it was a wise insight that led Preston to devote so much space to the builder's art, seeing that it is the one art that has given most to Masonry, even as it is still the art that furnishes Masonry with most of its symbols and illustrations. So while we may ignore a discussion of the Five Orders (though such a discussion would not be fruitless by any means and might be carried out by a Masonic Study Club with great profit) we can not afford to omit from our study some reflections on Architecture as a whole and its meanings for the Masonic life.

 

II

 

Perhaps the one man of modern times who, next to Ruskin, has written most beautifully of Architecture, was William Morris, a great prophet who blazed and throbbed with the spirit which is the soul of Masonry. One of his biographers (Clutton-Brock) says that "for him the great art was always Architecture; for in that he saw use made beautiful and the needs of man ennobled by their manner of satisfying them." When we ask Morris to give us a definition of this "great art" we have the following as our reply:

 

"A true architectural work is a building duly provided with all necessary furniture, decorated with all due ornament, according to the use, quality and dignity of the building, from mere mouldings or abstract lines, to the great epical works of sculpture and painting, which, except as decorations of the nobler forms of such buildings, cannot be produced at all."

 

In this definition Morris contends that a building deserving of the name of architecture must satisfy physical needs and that it must also satisfy the need for beauty. Only a structure satisfying both needs can be called architecture; therefore a mere pergola which is ornamental only, or a pigsty, which is practical only, cannot be described as architecture.

 

When we turn to a study of the art of building we find that Morris' definition is borne out by facts, for always, from the first rude hut down to the last erected dwelling house or public building, men have made their buildings to house both the mind and the body. The stately structures of the ancient world were houses, books, monuments, statues, creeds, and dreams all in one; "the solemn colonnades at Thebes, and the graceful dignity of the Parthenon," tell us what men hoped and believed as well as how they lived. In the Middle Ages it was the same, for throughout that long period architecture was the very mother of all the arts; "it stood above all other arts, and made all others subservient to it. It commanded the sciences of the most brilliant intellects, and the greatest artists." Always a great building is more than a building; it is a human document; and a man might recover the history of the life of man upon the earth from the records left us in the ruins and remains of his architecture, so completely has man embodied his soul in the work of his hands.

 

III

 

"For, 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. As you travel through Europe, what arrests you most are the glorious cathedrals which tell of the faith of the past. One can read the history of Christianity, of its bewildering varieties, of its contradictions and oppositions, of the secrets of its life, in its buildings. The story of the Tower of Babel is not a fable. Man has ever been trying to build to heaven, embodying his prayer and dream in brick and stone. And as he wrought his faith and vision into stone, it was but natural that the tools of the builder should become the emblems of the thoughts of the thinker. Not only his tools, but his temples themselves are symbols of that House of Doctrine, that Home of the Soul, which, though unseen, he is building in the midst of the years."

 

"That Home of the Soul." In these words we have the secret of Masonry's use of architecture. No longer are we, as Masons, interested in the building of material structures but we are using the builder's tools and methods, hallowed by long use, enriched by ancient associations, and found appropriate through centuries of experience, as symbols arid types of a building work of a different kind, even a great structure of truth and love wherein brethren may dwell in unity and joy. Not arbitrarily have we chosen these symbols, for men leave so used them from the earliest times, as may be learned from very ancient books, the Holy Bible especially, which is full of allusions, references and metaphors, drawn from the builder's art. And this emblematic use of tools which was so instructive to early man is equally instructive now as one may learn from a study of our daily language. How often do expressions, words, and phrases, borrowed from architecture, spring to our lips! "Edification," "constructive," "solid foundation," "well founded," "roof of the world," "erect," "construct," "raise," "edify"; one could extend such a list indefinitely, for we use the ideas of building up or tearing down almost every day of our lives, and almost always, be it noted, we use the builder in a good sense, and the tearer-down in a bad sense. There is something appropriate, in the nature of things, in the intimate relation between the message of Masonry and the language of architecture. This is not to forget, of course, that there is also a historical connection between the two, for from our study of backgrounds we may recall how one grew out of the other, but even had there been no such actual relationships the two arts, that of the builder and that of the Mason respectively, have so much in common as to ideals and method, that the latter has a native right to employ the terms and symbols of the former.

 

What is a Mason, if not an architect of the mystical order? Insofar as he is true to his Royal Art he is one engaged in building up within himself a real, but viewless, Temple; its foundations laid deep in character, its walls formed of the solid stuff of genuine manhood, its roof the stately dome of truth, its spires the upreaching of that aspiration toward a higher which was the original inspiration of every great cathedral. This is no fanciful picture or collection of high sounding words; you and I have both known of brethren, have we not, formed by their Masonic fellowships, and inspired by their Masonic ideals, to be with whom was itself an act of worship ? Truly such men are Temples, Temples not made with hands !

 

What is Masonry itself if not a world builder, a social architecture on the grand style? With its fellowships established in every nation under heaven, its activities ceasing never night or day, its message uttered in nearly all the languages of the race but always the same message, it is one of the mightiest, one of the most benign, one of the most constructive of all-forces in the world. When its work is finished, which will not be until the end is ended, it will have proved itself a builder of an unseen cathedral more noble. more enduring than any empire ever made.

 

IV

 

All the emotions and thoughts aroused in me on the night I took my "Second" are still fresh in my memory after these many years, but nothing remains more vividly than my surprise at the elaborate lecture about the Five Senses. "What," I kept saying to myself, "does all this mean? In what possible way can our sense apparatus have anything to do with the Masonic life?" I remained nonplussed over the matter until I began to ask myself what Dart these senses play in life outside Masonry and then it dawned upon me that the ritual would be incomplete were it to omit the senses from the scope of its illumination. When I discovered later that at least one scientist Havelock Ellis  had written several volumes about them, I began to see that an interpreter could write whole libraries about the senses from the Masonic point of view; and I began to believe that it would require a long life-time for a man to thoroughly Mason-ize his five senses.

 

V

 

Consider the part played by the senses in a man's life! At the center of the man is his consciousness, a lonely, isolated, invisible, center of awareness; outside the man, surrounding him on all sides, the universe, with its limitless number of things and happenings; the senses are nothing other than the channels perhaps the only channels through which the outside universe gets into the man's consciousness. He is an island; the senses are the bridge over which he passes to the mainland, and over which the mainland passes into him. Every impression, every experience, every sensation, every word must pass by way of them; if you could control a man's senses then you would be able to determine how much of the universe gets into him and how much of him gets into the universe. This is the idea at the bottom of the great series of wall paintings in the Congressional Library at Washington wherein a picture is devoted to each sense. Since this is true it follows that the man who would make his mind the home of goodness, truth and beauty, will be one who sees to it that his senses are trained to do their work efficiently, and that he permits nothing to travel back and forth over their bridges except that which is good, or true, or beautiful.

 

This, I take it, is the chief point made in the Second degree lecture; a Mason is to make his five senses into five points of contact with his fellows by seeing to it that only good-will, kindliness, and all the fine things of brotherhood are permitted to travel back and forth between him and them. This implies the further point and it is one that we shall need to elaborate  that the senses, like every other faculty of a man, may be trained and improved, so that the man who has been making a bad use of them can learn to make a good use. If this seems far-fetched or even impossible to us we need only direct our attention to each sense in turn to be convinced that it is always being done.

 

VI

 

"What is more or less than a touch?" says Walt Whitman. Touch is the first, or original sense, and is employed in the lowest forms of life, such as the jellyfish, long before separate organs are dreamed of; as the living creature grows more and more responsive to the world outside it the general sense of touch grows more and more defined until it gradually breaks itself up into the other senses of smelling, tasting, seeing, and hearing, and by so doing the creature rises in the scale of life. From one point of view, at least, it is not too much to say that the whole process of physical evolution consists of splitting up the general sense of touch and of refining and specializing each of the splitoffs. Even when we get to man, the highest animal in the scale, this development and improvement of the sense of touch need not stop; a musician or an artist can carry the development of touch to the utmost limit of refinement.

 

At the back of the tongue is a series of little organs, called taste-buds; when any object is brought against them they give to the consciousness a feeling of flavor. This sense, also, may be developed. Only a few days ago I watched a "tea taster" at work determining the quality of various kinds of tea. He sat at a revolving table on which were several cups of the beverage and he would sip from each one in turn; it was only a mouthful but it sufficed, for his taste-buds were so accurate that he could tell the jobber where the tea had been grown and what it was worth.

 

In lower animals the sense of smell is often unimaginable acute. Henri Fabre describes a moth which can detect the presence of a female rods away in forest at night merely by the odor. This is the sense of smell raised to the nth degree of acuteness, for the naturalist himself was unable to detect the slightest odor even in a jar full of the insects. We can not smell as the animals can because we do not need to; nevertheless, like the other senses, one can develop this faculty, as is demonstrated by the perfumery expert who can detect the various kinds and grades of perfumery quite as easily as my tea taster could judge of tea.

 

When we make sounds in the air, either by speaking or by striking against some object, waves travel through the atmosphere in all directions; when these waves strike against the tympanum of the ear they give us the experience of hearing, so that hearing itself is a kind of touch. The extent to which hearing can be developed and educated is shown by the expert musician who can detect subtle variations of sound wholly lost on the others of us.

 

"Seeing is touch at a distance." The sun, or some artificial light, sends waves through the ether; these strike against the retina of the eye and give us the sense of seeing. If the waves are of one length and speed we see one color; if of another we see a different color. The Indian who can see an antelope grazing afar off on the prairie, the pilot who can detect the smoke of a coming ship in the remote distance, are examples of men who have raised this sense to an extraordinary effectiveness.

 

VII

 

In this discussion, which may seem to some almost school-boyish, I have had it in mind to emphasize the fact that we humans have a considerable degree of control over our senses, and that, if we choose, we can improve them by right training. From the point of view of general culture this means that we can greatly enrich our lives, and that is surely worth while; from the point of view of Masonry, which is necessarily our chief concern, it means that the senses may be so used as to Mason-ize our lives. The candidate is urged to touch, taste, or smell nothing that would injure himself or brethren: he is, in the language of the V. S. L., to "take heed how he hears," lest some word of slander against a brother be given admission to his mind; and he is to see nothing in his fellows except their better selves. How much it would mean to every lodge, by way of avoiding friction and of increasing brotherhood, if every Mason would train his senses to ignore the things that divide or injure, and to heed only those things that increase brotherly love! This is a high ideal, truly, but, then, Masonry itself is a high ideal !

 

----o----

 

A MEMORIAL TO WASHINGTON THE MASON

 

BY BRO. GEO. L. SCHOONOVER, P. G. M., IOWA

 

WE AMERICANS build monuments to hearts. Sentimental we are, and sentimental we must remain, if we are to accomplish our destiny. America was founded in sentiment. America, in 1776, was a living protest against tyranny - not the tyranny which makes men physical slaves, but that tyranny which makes men slaves by denying them the right to possess sentiment. The pioneer may have been somewhat of a soldier of fortune. He may have craved excitement - the excitement of the chase and the hazard of discovering and subduing the unknown. But underneath it all was the throbbing sentiment of absolute freedom. It was a passion with him. It was worth any price. The conquering of the West was born of the same sentiment. Every war in which we have engaged has been won because our deepest sentiments were aroused. We may search, and perhaps find, commercial, practical and sometimes sordid motives among individual Americans - but they did not rule our people.

 

The heart has ruled our people. The greatest hearts among us have been our heroes and our great men. The greatest hearts have won us by their senti ments of real Americanism. No more outstanding figure pervades the recollection of the recent Greal War than Theodore Roosevelt. America, North and South, knows that the greatest loss of the Civil Wa was Lincoln's death. And the Anglo-Saxon world England no less than the United States, pays homage to the great heart of the Revolution, George Washington.

 

The world knows the real George Washington less because of the sentimental myths woven about his his torical character. Americans appreciate his service to our Country. They have pictured him as a great, self-made character. "Father of his Country" they call him, having in mind his service as a statesman and a nation-builder. But of the human side of him they know little. When they think of his stalwartness, they think of him as a General of the American Army. Little do they know of the countless authentic instances of his stalwartness as an incorruptible first citizen. His great heart, for most people, is emblazoned upon battle fields and the history of campaigns.

 

To a little town in Virginia, and to a little old Masonic lodge in that town, are we indebted for the little known but well authenticated human side of this world renowned character. Lose the personal relics of that lodge, and even Mount Vernon itself can never redeem the record of the man great because the heart of him was great. The homely, home-grown heart, of which the world knows so little. Those brave and persistent women who have saved Mt. Vernon for us performed a service for America which is only now beginning to be appreciated. What they have preserved for us is invaluable. More than a house or a farm, it is a heritage, barely rescued from destruction.

 

To Masonry comes now an even greater opportunity. Housed in a little nineteenth century lodge room in Alexandria are more relics - human relics - of Washington than ever were or ever can be gathered together, of the real Washington. They appertain to Washington, The Mason. It is to Washington The Mason that we must look if we would understand the true character of the man. It is into this little lodge room that we must enter, if we would find the source of his inspiration and aspiration,the things that have made him a World-character.

 

He who would deny that this is the true source of the qualities which made George Washington great must in this lodge-room face his Masonic Apron; the charter for the lodge, granted to "George Washington, Late Commander-in-Chief" of the United States forces, as Worshipful Master, by Edmund Randolph, Grand Master of Virginia; letters in autograph, proving his pride in his Masonic connection, and not one, but hundreds of other mementoes, personal and Masonic in their character, conclusive in their evidence that it is to Masonry that we must look for the groundwork of Washington's Americanism, even as we must do likewise with most of the other great characters of the formative period of this Republic.

 

Because this old Lodge-Hall houses these relics; because the surroundings are hazardous in that they are not fire-proof; because this heritage is worthy of being placed in a memorial temple befitting so exalted a character; because to lose them would be an irreparable loss to a great Republic which delights to do Washington honor; for these reasons has it come about that Masons of vision outside of Virginia have proposed a National Memorial, typifying the loyalty of the Fraternity in the United States as a whole, in which these relics should find an eternal resting place. The sentiment that pervades the very atmosphere of the old Hall, no less than these priceless material mementoes of the man Washington, belongs to American Masons, and has provoked in members of the Fraternity a sense of duty unfulfilled, until the memorial house in which they are to be kept shall be a Mecca worthy of the Fraternity of Washington's inspiration.

 

To build such a memorial by the free-will offerings of the Masonic Fraternity in the United States is to perform a great service to the Fraternity, also. There is need for a national symbol of the interdependence of our American liberties and this great patriotic organization of ours. The campaign for its erection will be more than a campaign for funds. It will mean a reawakening of our members to the civic responsibilities devolving upon us. Those who undertake to promote this enterprise will not be solicitors for dollars, they will be evangels of Masonic duty to our Country in time of stress.

 

----o----

 

MYSTERIOUS MASONRY

 

BY BRO. L. B. MITCHELL, MICHIGAN

 

I do not know what it can be, but some mysterious thing

Seems running through the Order with a gracious, soulful ring;

E'en though 'tis but a gathering of neighbors from around

'Tis something so much different than elsewhere can be found.

 

The touch of its investiture brings its peculiar thrill,

It seems to hold, as it is placed, a "string" upon the will,

It gives its message to the soul, it beautifies the place

That needs it most that it may there reflect its matchless grace.

 

There's something in its opening, - though often heard before,

That so appeals we can but help to love it more and more;

Though formal it may really be and anciently expressed,

It seems to lead into the way of brother-biding rest.

 

And there's its work, - the symbols rare that teach in ways sublime

Upon the nature plane the way to e'en the gold refine;

It summons to the true ideals and to them lights the way,

Its working tools in simple form true character display.

 

And there's its closing, beautiful, we part upon the Square;

The heart has tested from its wealth a sample of its fare,

And as we go there's something seems to "carry on" the grace

That somehow crept in unawares while we were in the place.

 

I do not know what it can be, but some mysterious thing

Plays on the heart within its walls, e'en to its finest string;

'Tis something all unknown to words, this dear old mystic Art

Expressed alone to those who bring to it the brother-heart.

 

----o----

 

THE KIND MESSENGER

 

BY BRO.GERALD A. NANCARROW, INDIANA

 

See that figure in the distance

With his scythe upon his arm?

Does the end of this existence

Bring but fear and hold no charm?

Do you look upon the reaper

As a monster in your way;

Do you feel no hope that's deeper

Than the joys of this poor day?

 

Ah! That figure in the distance

Is but pointing to the hour,

Is but off'ring his assistance -

Doing all within his power,

To show how fast the grains of sand

Hasten through the glass he holds;

How much of work on ev'ry hand

E'er another life enfolds.

 

----o----

 

THE FRATERNAL FORUM

EDITED BY BRO. GEO. F. FRAZER, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF STEWARDS

 

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Geo. W. Baird, District of Columbia.

Joseph Barnet, California.