CHAPTER I

AMERICAN FREEMASONS AND AMERICAN FREEMASONRY

BEFORE ENTERING ON ANY DISCUSSION of the nature and doctrines of American Freemasonry, we must touch upon a point which, already firmly fixed in the minds of many of our readers, will, if not fairly met, prejudice them against our present Study, and so weaken the force of all that we may say. The point may be called that of their own personal experience; and, how hard it is to weigh a matter calmly when personal experience bends us one way or the other, every man of serious and reflecting mind must candidly admit.

“We have known many Masons,” our readers will say, “we have known them intimately, and have found them excellent men, good fathers, faithful husbands, loyal citizens; honest and upright in their dealings; open-handed in their generous benevolence; prominent in their own church circles; friends even of the Catholic clergy, who never appealed to them for assistance in vain; respected by all, and an honor to the community in which they lived. Such are many of the Masons whom we have known, and from the mouths of whom we have learned the nature and the aims of the Masonic Order. That they knew these aims, needs no stronger proof than the long years that they have lived as Masons; that they told us the truth, is witnessed to by the integrity of their character and the sincerity of their love.”

Against the praise lavished on such estimable men we have not a word to say. How common the type may be among American Freemasons, we are unable to state; but we are perfectly willing to believe that it is by no means uncommon. We are willing even to grant the sincerity of your informants; you must pardon us, however, if we question their knowledge. It may seem to you, for the moment, rash and presumptuous for us to do so; we ask you only to consider our reasons. We are content to be judged by them.

We have granted your Masonic friends’ candor and sincerity, for we would avoid offending both you and them. We would, however, submit to your consideration the rule prescribed to them by their Order in all their dealings with those who are not Masons. It is contained in all Masonic rituals and is found in Mackey’s Masonic Ritualist, pp. 248 and 249:

“Behavior in presence of strangers not Masons.—You shall be cautious in your words and carriage, that the most penetrating stranger shall not be able to discover or find out what is not proper to be intimated; and sometimes you shall divert a discourse, and manage it prudently for the honor of the Worshipful Fraternity.” Secrecy is after all, remember, the very essence of the institution. “The duty of an Entered Apprentice is embraced by the virtues of silence and secrecy,” we are told in the same volume, p. 30; and the opening words of the 9th or Highest Degree of the American rite, viz: Select Master, p. 523, emphasize for the proficient in Masonry, the same Masonic virtues. “The two virtues which it is particularly the symbolical design of the Select Master’s degree to inculcate are secrecy and silence. They are, indeed, called the cardinal virtues of a Select Master, because the necessity of their practice is prominently set before the candidate in the legend, as well as in all the ceremonies of the degree. But these virtues constitute the very essence of all Masonic character; they are the safeguards of the institution, giving to it all its security and perpetuity, and are enforced by frequent admonitions in all the degrees, from the lowest to the highest. The Entered Apprentice begins his Masonic career by learning the duty of secrecy and silence. Hence it is appropriate that in that degree which is the consummation of initiation, in which the whole cycle of Masonic science is completed, the abstruse machinery of symbolism should be employed to impress the same important virtues on the mind of the neophyte. . . .

“ ‘If we turn our eyes back to antiquity,’ says Calcott, ‘we shall find that the old Egyptians had so great a regard for silence and secrecy in the mysteries of their religion that they set up the god Harpocrates to whom they paid peculiar honor and veneration; who was represented with the right hand placed near the heart, and the left down by the side, covered with a skin before, full of eyes and ears; to signify that of many things to be seen and heard few are to be published.’

“Apuleius, who was an initiate in the mysteries of Isis, says: ‘By no peril will I ever be compelled to disclose to the uninitiated the things that I have had entrusted to me on condition of silence.’ ”

It would be well at least to ponder on these things when weighing the words of your Masonic friends. We will, however, for the moment, waive this all-important duty of Masonic secrecy, and suppose that your friends have been as open and candid with you as you assert. Tell us in all sincerity, what they have told you concerning the aim and purposes of the Order. Have they asserted that it is a purely social organization? a mere gathering to promote goodfellowship? a society for the purely temporal advancement and assistance of its members? a mere benevolent association to care for the widow, and the orphan, and the brethren in distress? That it has nothing to do with politics, or party, or a man’s religion?

Are these the things that in all candor and sincerity they have told you? If they are, we ask you to follow us in our Study, for we shall give you, from authentic American Masonic sources, more light on many of these matters than your friends have deigned to afford you.

We disclaim, however, any desire of imposing personal opinions of our own upon you. We are content to submit our authorities and constitute you the judge of the correctness of our deductions, if, indeed, in most cases, deductions be not superfluous.

And now, as a practical test of your friends’ Masonic knowledge, let us examine how correct it is in regard to the very end and object of Freemasonry. For, to be fair, you must admit that if they are ill-informed on a point so fundamental and primary as this, their information is little to be relied on in more abstruse and recondite matters. Now the fact is, that sincere as they may be, they are sincerely in error; although, as Dr. Mackey assures us, those that shared in the error, constituted in his days a large majority of the Brotherhood.

“What, then, is the design of Freemasonry?” he asks in his Symbolism of Freemasonry, pp. 301-302. “A very large majority of its disciples,” he answers, “looking only to its practical results, as seen in the every-day business of life,—to the noble charities which it dispenses, to the tears of the widow which it has dried, to the cries of the orphans which it has hushed, to the wants of the destitute which it has supplied,—arrive with too much rapidity at the conclusion that Charity, and that, too, in its least exalted sense of eleemosynary aid, is the great design of the institution.”

“Others,” he continues, “with a still more contracted view, remembering the pleasant reunions of their lodge banquets, the unreserved communications which are thus encouraged, and the solemn obligations of mutual trust and confidence that are continually inculcated, believe that it was intended solely to promote the social sentiments and cement the bonds of friendship.”

The true object and aim of Masonry, American Masonry—for it is of this that Dr. Mackey speaks—is therefore neither mere sociability nor mere eleemosynary benevolence which shows itself in the form of material assistance to the poor, the aged and afflicted;—it is something higher, something vaster, in the true Masonic idea; something immeasurably more worthy of the instructed Mason. In admitting, therefore, the sincerity of your Masonic friends, we have been forced, in justice, to question their knowledge.

“Those Masons,” says Bro. McClenachan in his Addendum to Dr. Mackey’s Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, p. 970, “who take more delight in the refreshments of the banquet than in the labors of the Lodge, and who admire Masonry only for its social aspect, are ironically said to be ‘Members of the Knife and Fork Degree.’ The sarcasm was first uttered by Dermott, when he said in his Ahiman Rezon, p. 36, speaking of the Moderns, that ‘it was also thought expedient to abolish the old custom of studying geometry in the Lodge; and some of the young brethren made it appear that a good knife and fork in the hands of a dexterous brother, over proper materials, would give greater satisfaction and add more to the rotundity of the Lodge than the best scale and compass in Europe.’ ”

But it may be that your friends are something more than this, and that they even deserve to be ranked among “Bright Masons.” They may be well acquainted with the ritual of the Order. They may have at their fingers’ ends the forms of opening and closing a Lodge. They may even be able to go through all the ceremonies of initiation without a mistake, and yet be only on the threshold of true Masonic knowledge.

“A Mason is said to be ‘bright,’ ” says Dr. Mackey in his Encyclopædia, p. 130, “who is well acquainted with the ritual, the forms of opening and closing, and the ceremonies of initiation. This expression does not, however, in its...