THE SHORT TALK BULLETIN |
... Sublime ...
Learned students of our art have discovered that the word "Sublime" as
applied to the degree of Master Mason is not one of those matters which are of
an antiquity of "Time immemorial." It seems to have made its appearance in print
first about 1801. Today, its use is practically universal.
That the degree is sublime, is all the highest meanings of that much abused
word, is not a matter for discussion or proof; it is sublime if we feel it as
sublime; it is just an ordinary ceremony, if that is all it is to us. Sublimity
is not in the thing, but in us. The Forty Seventh Problem of Euclid in its
absolute perfection is sublime to a mathematician; to a six year old child or a
savage who cannot count beyond ten, it is Nothing. The most beautiful sunset
which ever thrilled the sense of color could not be sublime to a blind man, nor
can the harmonies of Beethoven or Wagner be sublime to a man born deaf. If the
Master Mason degree is sublime, it is because of what it is and what it does to
a man's heart.
The Master's degree is immensely different from the two preceding ones. It has
the same externals, as far as entry and closing are concerned; it uses also a
circumambulation, a passage from Scripture, has an obligation and a bringing to
more light--"all the light which can be communicated to you in a Blue Lodge."
But its second section departs utterly from the architectural symbolism of the
first two degrees, and concerns itself with a living, a dying, and a living
again. It is at once more human and more spiritual than the preceding degrees.
It strikes in upon the heart with the force and effect of a great bell, heard in
a silent place; no thoughtful man receives, or even sees this degree, with any
understanding of its symbolism, who does not feel a sense of awe and wonder that
mind of man could conceive it, put it together, place so much of wisdom in so
simple a vehicle, give so much light in so few words and in so short a time.
The Master's degree as a whole is a symbol of old age; of wisdom, of experience.
It is a symbol of preparation for that other life which it so grandly promises.
It beings to the initiate the symbolism of the Sprig of Acacia, and tells him in
one breath that a man must stand alone, even while he must lean upon the
Everlasting Arms. It lays before him the whole drama of man's longing for a
Something Beyond; it tells the tale of what ignorance and brute strength may to
destroy knowledge and virtue, even while it shows that never can darkness
overcome light, never can evil win over what is good, never can error prevail
over truth.
There are those who find in the symbolism of the Third Degree a promise of the
resurrection of the body. None can blame them; the symbolism is there. Nor can
one blame the miner who digs in the earth after the outcropping of an ore, for
believing that the ore is all he can expect to find; even when a later delver in
the earth goes through the ore and finds a diamond. If, to a devout and orthodox
Christian the Master Mason degree is symbolic of the resurrection of the body,
that doctrine of bodily resurrection is in itself a symbol of a spiritual
raising. Each of us, then, may interpret this part of the degree according to
the light which is given him, and no man has either the wisdom or the right to
say, "that interpretation is true, this one false."
There have been some twenty or more interpretations of the whole degree; they
range all the way from the story of the Garden of Eden to a sort of cipher drama
of the violent death of King Charles the First. Modern students, however, are
reasonably well agreed that the Hiramic Legend is a retelling of the immortality
of the soul; it belongs with the story of Isis and Osiris, and that most
beautiful of the early religious myths, the Brahmanic story of Ademi and Heva.
Thus interpreted, the soul, mind, or spirit, after it acquires knowledge, is
subjected to temptation. It must bargain with conditions, make a pact with evil,
compromise with reality, or suffer. Every life demonstrates the truth of this;
we are all tempted to compromise with the best that is in us for the sake of
expediency. Nor infrequently, we, as did a Certain Three, think to win
knowledge, power, place, reward for ourselves, not by patient effort, but by
force alone.
In the Sublime Degree there is no compromise. Those who seek unlawfully are
bidden to wait until they are found worthy... but there is no suggestion of
yielding to their importunity if they will not. Nor do they wait. For a time it
appears that force is superior to righteousness, that evil can overcome good.
but only for a time. And who, indeed, that Which Was Lost has never been
recovered, yet the manner of its losing has been an inspiration to all men in
their search for it ever since; a just retribution overtook the evil and the
consequences of wrong doing are set forth unequivocally.
It is difficult to write of that which is sublime, translate it into words of
everyday, and at the same time comply with the statutory requirements. All
Master Masons will forgive the seeming vagueness of these references; indeed,
they should not find them vague. but in any attempt to translate the symbolism
into words, it loses in two ways; first, as any symbol must lose (can you
describe a rose so that it appears beautiful or put the majesty of a mountain or
the magnitude of the ocean in a phrase?) ; second, because the appeal of the
symbol is to the heart, the soul, the spirit; when one attempts to make of it
also an appeal to the mind, the spirit of the symbolism becomes clouded over
with materiality; the bloom is gone from the petal; the butterfly is crushed.
The moral lessons in the degree are many; the virtue of loyalty is most obvious
and, perhaps least important, symbolically. That truth wins in the end; that
evil does not flourish; that strength of heart is greater than strength of arm;
that it is by the spirit of brotherhood, not by one man alone, that that which
has fallen can be raised; that in his greatest extremity man has but one to Whom
to turn; that beyond brotherhood the soul stands always, and most always stand,
alone before God, when no prayers save its own may avail; that he who would win
true brotherhood must give proof of his fitness to be a brother; these, and many
more can be read from the degree by the most casual minded.
But there is a deeper lesson, for him who is minded to dig far enough. There are
certain matters which can be proved by logic, and by experiment. Thus, we know
not only by vision, by experience, and by counting on the fingers, that two
added to two make four, but also by demonstrating this fact by mathematics.
It is entirely obvious to all scientists that the laws of nature are constant;
they do not vary between here and there. But it is not demonstrable! We are
confident that the laws of motion and gravitation as we see them demonstrated on
earth and in the solar system, are the same in some far off planet of an unknown
sun, in some other solar system of the existence of which we do not even know
But we cannot prove it.
In this sense we cannot prove either God or Immortality. A God who could be
proved to a finite mind by a finite means would be a finite God, and the Great
Architect we believe to be infinite. The crux of the whole controversy between
those who profess a science and those who profess a religion, has been over this
demand on the part of those scientists that religion reduce God to figures and
prove Him by a rule; while the follower of a religion founded entirely on faith
demands that the scientist forego his reason and believe without proof!
In other words, one all Mind demands that one all Soul work and talk wholly in
terms of Mind. One all Soul insists that Mind forget its reason and its logic
and deal wholly in belief and faith.
But a man is not only Mind, nor is he only Immortal Soul. The ego is made up of
both. When they become at war with each other we have either a religious fanatic
or an atheist. Luckily for most of us, there is no conflict; we believe the
things of the heart because of proof the mind cannot understand, just as we know
the demonstrable truths of science with expositions which mean nothing to a
heart.
The esoteric meaning the Sublime Degree of Master Mason is not at all for the
mind. To the mind, it is not a proof of anything. But it truly is the Forty
Seventh Problem of Euclid of the Heart!
As that strange and wonderful mathematic wonder contains the germ of all
scientific measurement, so does the symbolism of the Third Degree contain the
germ of all doctrines of immortality, all beliefs in a hereafter, all heart
certainty of a beneficent Creator Who has us in His holy keeping.
There have been those who, fearing that Freemasonry was about to set up a
doctrine and a church to teach it, have frowned upon Freemasonry because of this
symbolism. but note carefully, there is not in all the Master Mason degree any
suggestion of creed or dogma or even of a "way to heaven." The Mohammedan who
believes that the way to Allah is to kill a Christian or two, will find no
contradiction of his queer faith in the Master Mason degree. The Christian who
sincerely believes that only by Baptism can he be "saved" will find nothing in
the Master Mason degree to hurt that faith. The Spiritualist who feels that
unseen friends are waiting to receive him and carry him forward, can be a good
Master Mason. The Third Degree teaches not how to win immortality, not how to
get to heaven, not any particular way to worship the Great Architect; it teaches
that immortality is; that God is, and leaves to others the fitting of those
ineffable truths into what frames they please.
How could the degree be otherwise than sublime? It contains the greatest
thought, the most intense hope, the most sincere prayer which all mankind
possesses. From the dawn of humanity man has tried to see God. He has believed
in God. He has struggled toward the light, often stumbling, often failing, often
failing, but always stretching forth hands upward, winning his slow way to a
little better spiritual comprehension of the Great Mystery.
The Sublime Degree of Master Mason is at once a promise and a performance; an
exposition and a demonstration; a doing and a believing of the loftiest
aspirations in the heart of humanity. Of course it is sublime; and equally of
course, many who fail to see its inner meaning do not find it so. The beauty of
the unseen sunset is there only for eyes which can see. The man who finds the
degree otherwise than sublime must blame the man, not the degree. For it is not
of the earth, earthy; there is in this ceremony and its simple but awful words,
something as much beyond the minds of the generations of men who made it, as
there is in its mystery, Something Beyond the comprehensions of those who give
it and they, fortunate among men...who receive it and take it to their hearts.