Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Part 78

Cagliostro was the Agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the Free-Masons of London that the time had come to begin the work of re-building the Temple of the Eternal. He had introduced into Masonry a new Rite called the _Egyptian_, and endeavored to resuscitate the mysterious worship of Isis. The three letters L. P. D. on his seal, were the initials of the words _"Lilia pedibus destrue;" tread under foot the Lilies_ [of France], and a Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth century has upon it a sword cutting off the stalk of a lily, and the words "_talem dabit ultio messem_," such harvest revenge will give.

A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the fanatic of Geneva, became the centre of the revolutionary movement in France, and a Prince of the blood-royal went thither to swear the destruction of the successors of Philippe le Bel on the tomb of Jacques de Molai. The registers of the Order of Templars attest that the Regent, the Duc d'

Orleans, was Grand Master of that formidable Secret Society, and that his successors were the Duc de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Conde, and the Duc de Cosse-Brissac.

The Templars compromitted the King; they saved him from the rage of the People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the catastrophe prepared for centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars demanded. The secret movers of the French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai.

When Louis XVI. was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward the Army of the Temple was to direct all its efforts against the Pope.

Jacques de Molai and his companions were perhaps martyrs, but their avengers dishonored their memory. Royalty was regenerated on the scaffold of Louis XVI., the Church triumphed in the captivity of Pius VI., carried a prisoner to Valence, and dying of fatigue and sorrow, but the successors of the Ancient Knights of the Temple perished, overwhelmed in their fatal victory.

MORALS AND DOGMA.

CONSISTORY.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

x.x.xI.

GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER.

[Inspector Inquisitor.]

To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispa.s.sionately, and to decide impartially;--these are the chief duties of a Judge. After the lessons you have received, I need not further enlarge upon them. You will be ever eloquently reminded of them by the furniture upon our Altar, and the decorations of the Tribunal.

The Holy Bible will remind you of your obligation; and that as you judge here below, so you will be yourself judged hereafter, by One who has not to submit, like an earthly judge, to the sad necessity of inferring the motives, intentions, and purposes of men [of which all crime essentially consists] from the uncertain and often unsafe testimony of their acts and words; as men in thick darkness grope their way, with hands outstretched before them: but before Whom every thought, feeling, impulse, and intention of every soul that now is, or ever was, or ever will be on earth, is, and ever will be through the whole infinite duration of eternity, present and visible.

The Square and Compa.s.s, the Plumb and Level, are well known to you as a Mason. Upon you as a Judge, they peculiarly inculcate uprightness, impartiality, careful consideration of facts and circ.u.mstances, accuracy in judgment, and uniformity in decision. As a Judge, too, you are to bring up square work and square work only. Like a temple erected by the plumb, you are to lean neither to one side nor the other. Like a building well squared and levelled, you are to be firm and steadfast in your convictions of right and justice. Like the circle swept with the compa.s.ses, you are to be true. In the scales of justice you are to weigh the facts and the law alone, nor place in either scale personal friendship or personal dislike, neither fear nor favor: and when reformation is no longer to be hoped for, you are to smite relentlessly with the sword of justice.

The peculiar and princ.i.p.al symbol of this Degree is the Tetractys of Pythagoras, suspended in the East, where ordinarily the sacred word or letter glitters, like it, representing the Deity. Its nine external points form the triangle, the chief symbol in Masonry, with many of the meanings of which you are familiar.

To us, its three sides represent the three princ.i.p.al attributes of the Deity, which created, and now, as ever, support, uphold, and guide the Universe in its eternal movement; the three supports of the Masonic Temple, itself an emblem of the Universe:--Wisdom, or the Infinite Divine Intelligence; Strength, or Power, the Infinite Divine Will; and Beauty, or the Infinite Divine Harmony, the Eternal Law, by virtue of which the infinite myriads of suns and worlds flash ever onward in their ceaseless revolutions, without clash or conflict, in the Infinite of s.p.a.ce, and change and movement are the law of all created existences.

To us, as Masonic Judges, the triangle figures forth the Pyramids, which, planted firmly as the everlasting hills, and accurately adjusted to the four cardinal points, defiant of all a.s.saults of men and time, teach us to stand firm and unshaken as they, when our feet are planted upon the solid truth.

It includes a mult.i.tude of geometrical figures, all having a deep significance to Masons. The triple triangle is peculiarly sacred, having ever been among all nations a symbol of the Deity. Prolonging all the external lines of the Hexagon, which also it includes, we have six smaller triangles, whose bases cut each other in the central point of the Tetractys, itself always the symbol of the generative power of the Universe, the Sun, Brahma, Osiris, Apollo, Bel, and the Deity Himself.

Thus, too, we form twelve still smaller triangles, three times three of which compose the Tetractys itself.

I refrain from enumerating all the figures that you may trace within it: but one may not be pa.s.sed unnoticed. The Hexagon itself faintly images to us a cube, not visible at the first glance, and therefore the fit emblem of that faith in things invisible, most essential to salvation.

The first perfect solid, and reminding you of the cubical stone that sweated blood, and of that deposited by Enoch, it teaches justice, accuracy, and consistency.

The infinite divisibility of the triangle teaches the infinity of the Universe, of time, of s.p.a.ce, and of the Deity, as do the lines that, diverging from the common centre, ever increase their distance from each other as they are infinitely prolonged. As they may be infinite in number, so are the attributes of Deity infinite; and as they emanate from one centre and are projected into s.p.a.ce, so the whole Universe has emanated from G.o.d.

Remember also, my Brother, that you have other duties to perform than those of a judge. You are to inquire into and scrutinize carefully the work of the subordinate Bodies in Masonry. You are to see that recipients of the higher Degrees are not unnecessarily multiplied; that improper persons are carefully excluded from membership, and that in their life and conversation Masons bear testimony to the excellence of our doctrines and the incalculable value of the inst.i.tution itself. You are to inquire also into your own heart and conduct, and keep careful watch over yourself, that you go not astray. If you harbor ill-will and jealousy, if you are hospitable to intolerance and bigotry, and churlish to gentleness and kind affections, opening wide your heart to one and closing its portals to the other, it is time for you to set in order your own temple, or else you wear in vain the name and insignia of a Mason, while yet uninvested with the Masonic nature.

Everywhere in the world there is a natural law, that is, a constant mode of action, which seems to belong to the nature of things, to the const.i.tution of the Universe. This fact is universal. In different departments we call this mode of action by different names, as the law of Matter, the law of Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean by this, a certain mode of action which belongs to the material, mental, or moral forces, the mode in which commonly they are found to act, and in which it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of matter we know only from the fact that they are always obeyed. To us the actual _obedience_ is the only evidence of the ideal rule; for in respect to the conduct of the material world, the _ideal_ and the _actual_ are the same.

The laws of matter we learn only by observation and experience. Before experience of the fact, no man could foretell that a body, falling toward the earth, would descend sixteen feet the first second, twice that the next, four times the third, and sixteen times the fourth. No mode of action in our consciousness antic.i.p.ates this rule of action in the outer world. The same is true of all the laws of matter. The ideal law is known because it is a fact. The law is imperative. It must be obeyed without hesitation. Laws of crystallization, laws of proportion in chemical combination,--neither in these nor in any other law of Nature is there any margin left for oscillation of disobedience. Only the primal will of G.o.d works in the material world, and no secondary finite will.

There are no exceptions to the great general law of Attraction, which binds atom to atom in the body of a rotifier visible only by aid of a microscope, orb to orb, system to system; gives unity to the world of things, and rounds these worlds of systems to a Universe. At first there seem to be exceptions to this law, as in growth and decomposition, in the repulsions of electricity; but at length all these are found to be special cases of the one great law of attraction acting in various modes.

The variety of effect of this law at first surprises the senses; but in the end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated mind. Looked at in reference to this globe, an earthquake is no more than a c.h.i.n.k that opens in a garden-walk of a dry day in Summer. A sponge is porous, having small s.p.a.ces between the solid parts: the solar system is only _more_ porous, having larger room between the several orbs: the Universe yet more so, with s.p.a.ces between the systems, as small, compared with _infinite_ s.p.a.ce, as those between the atoms that compose the bulk of the smallest invisible animalcule, of which millions swim in a drop of salt-water. The same attraction holds together the animalcule, the sponge, the system, and the Universe. Every particle of matter in that Universe is related to each and all the other particles; and attraction is their common bond.

In the spiritual world, the world of human consciousness, there is also a law, an ideal mode of action for the spiritual forces of man. The law of Justice is as universal an one as the law of Attraction; though we are very far from being able to reconcile all the phenomena of Nature with it. The lark has the same right, in our view, to live, to sing, to dart at pleasure through the ambient atmosphere, as the hawk has to ply his strong wings in the Summer sunshine: and yet the hawk pounces on and devours the harmless lark, as _it_ devours the worm, and as the worm devours the animalcule; and, so far as we know, there is nowhere, in any future state of animal existence, any compensation for this apparent injustice. Among the bees, one rules, while the others obey--some work, while others are idle. With the small ants, the soldiers feed on the proceeds of the workmen's labor. The lion lies in wait for and devours the antelope that has apparently as good a right to life as he. Among men, some govern and others serve, capital commands and labor obeys, and one race, superior in intellect, avails itself of the strong muscles of another that is inferior; and yet, for all this, no one impeaches the justice of G.o.d.

No doubt all these varied phenomena are consistent with one great law of justice; and the only difficulty is that we do not, and no doubt we cannot, understand that law. It is very easy for some dreaming and visionary theorist to say that it is most evidently unjust for the lion to devour the deer, and for the eagle to tear and eat the wren; but the trouble is, that we know of no other way, according to the frame, the const.i.tution, and the organs which G.o.d has given them, in which the lion and the eagle could manage to live at all. Our little measure of justice is not G.o.d's measure. His justice does not require us to relieve the hard-working millions of all labor, to emanc.i.p.ate the serf or slave, unfitted to be free, from all control.

No doubt, underneath all the little bubbles, which are the lives, the wishes, the wills, and the plans of the two thousand millions or more of human beings on this earth (for bubbles they are, judging by the s.p.a.ce and time they occupy in this great and age-out-lasting sea of human-kind),--no doubt, underneath them all resides one and the same eternal force, which they shape into this or the other special form; and over all the same paternal Providence presides, keeping eternal watch over the little and the great, and producing variety of effect from Unity of Force.

It is entirely true to say that justice is the const.i.tution or fundamental law of the moral Universe, the law of right, a rule of conduct for man (as it is for every other living creature), in all his moral relations. No doubt all human affairs (like all other affairs), must be subject to that as the law paramount; and what is _right_ agrees therewith and stands, while what is _wrong_ conflicts with it and falls.

The difficulty is that we ever erect _our_ notions of what is right and just into the _law_ of justice, and insist that G.o.d shall adopt that as His law; instead of striving to learn by observation and reflection what His law _is_, and then believing that law to be consistent with _His_ infinite justice, whether it corresponds with _our_ limited notion of justice, or does not so correspond. We are too wise in our own conceit, and ever strive to enact our own little notions into the Universal Laws of G.o.d.

It might be difficult for man to prove, even to his own satisfaction, how it is right or just for him to subjugate the horse and ox to his service, giving them in return only their daily food, which G.o.d has spread out for them on all the green meadows and savannas of the world: or how it is just that we should slay and eat the harmless deer that only crops the green herbage, the buds, and the young leaves, and drinks the free-running water that G.o.d made common to all; or the gentle dove, the innocent kid, the many other living things that so confidently trust to our protection;--quite as difficult, perhaps, as to prove it just for one man's intellect or even his wealth to make another's strong arms his servants, for daily wages or for a bare subsistence.

To find out this universal law of justice is one thing--to undertake to measure off something with our own little tape-line, and call _that_ G.o.d's law of justice, is another. The great general plan and system, and the great general laws enacted by G.o.d, continually produce what to our limited notions is wrong and injustice, which hitherto men have been able to explain to their own satisfaction only by the hypothesis of another existence in which all inequalities and injustices in this life will be remedied and compensated for. To our ideas of justice, it is very unjust that the child is made miserable for life by deformity or organic disease, in consequence of the vices of its father; and yet that is part of the universal law. The ancients said that the child was _punished_ for the sins of its father. _We_ say that this its deformity or disease is the _consequence_ of its father's vices; but so far as concerns the question of justice or injustice, that is merely the change of a word.

It is very easy to lay down a broad, general principle, embodying our own idea of what is absolute justice, and to insist that everything shall conform to that: to say, "all human affairs must be subject to that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands, what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal gravitation toward the eternal right." The difficulty is that this Universe of necessities G.o.d-created, of sequences of cause and effect, and of life evolved from death, this interminable succession and aggregate of cruelties, will not conform to any such absolute principle or arbitrary theory, no matter in what sounding words and glittering phrases it may be embodied.

Impracticable rules in morals are always injurious; for as all men fall short of compliance with them, they turn real virtues into imaginary offences against a forged law. Justice as between man and man and as between man and the animals below him, is that which, under and according to the G.o.d-created relations existing between them, and the whole aggregate of circ.u.mstances surrounding them, is fit and right and proper to be done, with a view to the general as well as to the individual interest. It is not a theoretical principle by which the very relations that G.o.d has created and imposed on us are to be tried, and approved or condemned.

G.o.d has made this great system of the Universe, and enacted general laws for its government. Those laws environ everything that lives with a mighty network of necessity. He chose to create the tiger with such organs that he cannot crop the gra.s.s, but must eat other flesh or starve. He has made man carnivorous also; and some of the smallest birds are as much so as the tiger. In every step we take, in every breath we draw, is involved the destruction of a mult.i.tude of animate existences, each, no matter how minute, as much a living creature as ourself. He has made necessary among mankind a division of labor, intellectual and moral. He has made necessary the varied relations of society and dependence, of obedience and control.

What is thus made necessary cannot be unjust; for if it be, then G.o.d the great Lawgiver is Himself unjust. The evil to be avoided is, the legalization of injustice and wrong under the _false_ plea of necessity.

Out of all the relations of life grow duties,--as naturally grow and as undeniably, as the leaves grow upon the trees. If we have the right, created by G.o.d's law of necessity, to slay the lamb that we may eat and live, we have no right to torture it in doing so, because that is in no wise necessary. We have the right to live, if we fairly can, by the legitimate exercise of our intellect, and hire or buy the labor of the strong arms of others, to till our grounds, to dig in our mines, to toil in our manufactories; but we have no right to overwork or underpay them.

It is not only true that we may learn the moral law of justice, the law of right, by experience and observation; but that G.o.d has given us a moral faculty, our conscience, which is able to perceive this law directly and immediately, by intuitive perception of it; and it is true that man has in his nature a rule of conduct higher than what he has ever yet come up to,--an ideal of nature that shames his actual of history: because man has ever been p.r.o.ne to make necessity, his own necessity, the necessities of society, a plea for injustice. But this notion must not be pushed too far--for if we subst.i.tute this ideality for actuality, then it is equally true that we have within us an ideal rule of right and wrong, to which G.o.d Himself in His government of the world has never come, and against which He (we say it reverentially) every day offends. We detest the tiger and the wolf for the rapacity and love of blood which are their nature; we revolt against the law by which the crooked limbs and diseased organism of the child are the fruits of the father's vices; we even think that a G.o.d Omnipotent and Omniscient ought to have permitted no pain, no poverty, no servitude; our ideal of justice is more lofty than the actualities of G.o.d. It is well, as all else is well. He has given us that moral sense for wise and beneficent purposes. We accept it as a significant proof of the inherent loftiness of human nature, that it can entertain an ideal so exalted; and should strive to attain it, as far as we can do so consistently with the relations which He has created, and the circ.u.mstances which surround us and hold us captive.

If we faithfully use this faculty of conscience; if, applying it to the existing relations and circ.u.mstances, we develop it and all its kindred powers, and so deduce the duties that out of these relations and those circ.u.mstances, and limited and qualified by them, arise and become obligatory upon us, then we learn justice, the law of right, the divine rule of conduct for human life. But if we undertake to define and settle "the mode of action that belongs to the infinitely perfect nature of G.o.d," and so set up any ideal rule, beyond all human reach, we soon come to judge and condemn His work and the relations which it has pleased Him in His infinite wisdom to create.

A sense of justice belongs to human nature, and is a part of it. Men find a deep, permanent, and instinctive delight in justice, not only in the outward effects, but in the inward cause, and by their nature love this law of right, this reasonable rule of conduct, this justice, with a deep and abiding love. Justice is the object of the conscience, and fits it as light fits the eye and truth the mind.

Justice keeps just relations between men. It holds the balance between nation and nation, between a man and his family, tribe, nation, and race, so that his _absolute_ rights and theirs do not interfere, nor their _ultimate_ interests ever clash, nor the eternal interests of the one prove antagonistic to those of all or of any other one. This we must believe, if we believe that G.o.d is just. We must do justice to all, and demand it of all; it is a universal human debt, a universal human claim.

But we may err greatly in defining what that justice is. The _temporary_ interests, and what to human view are the rights, of men, do often interfere and clash. The life-interests of the individual often conflict with the permanent interests and welfare of society; and what may seem to be the natural rights of one cla.s.s or race, with those of another.

It is not true to say that "one man, however little, must not be sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men."

That is not only a fallacy, but a most dangerous one. Often one man and many men must be sacrificed, in the ordinary sense of the term, to the interest of the many. It is a comfortable fallacy to the selfish; for if they cannot, by the law of justice, be sacrificed for the common good, then their country has no right to demand of them _self_-sacrifice; and he is a fool who lays down his life, or sacrifices his estate, or even his luxuries, to insure the safety or prosperity of his country.

According to that doctrine, Curtius was a fool, and Leonidas an idiot; and to die for one's country is no longer beautiful and glorious, but a mere absurdity. Then it is no longer to be asked that the common soldier shall receive in his bosom the sword or bayonet-thrust which otherwise would let out the life of the great commander on whose fate hang the liberties of his country, and the welfare of millions yet unborn.

On the contrary, it is certain that necessity rules in all the affairs of men, and that the interest and even the life of one man must often be sacrificed to the interest and welfare of his country. Some must ever lead the forlorn hope: the missionary must go among savages, bearing his life in his hand; the physician must expose himself to pestilence for the sake of others; the sailor, in the frail boat upon the wide ocean, escaped from the foundering or burning ship, must step calmly into the hungry waters, if the lives of the pa.s.sengers can be saved only by the sacrifice of his own; the pilot must stand firm at the wheel, and let the flames scorch away his own life to insure the common safety of those whom the doomed vessel bears.

The ma.s.s of men are always looking for what is just. All the vast machinery which makes up a State, a world of States, is, on the part of the people, an attempt to organize, not that ideal justice which finds fault with G.o.d's ordinances, but that practical justice which may be attained in the actual organization of the world. The minute and wide-extending civil machinery which makes up the law and the courts, with all their officers and implements, on the part of mankind, is chiefly an effort to reduce to practice the theory of right.

Const.i.tutions are made to establish justice; the decisions of courts are reported to help us judge more wisely in time to come. The nation aims to get together the most nearly just men in the State, that they may incorporate into statutes their aggregate sense of what is right. The people wish law to be embodied justice, administered without pa.s.sion.

Even in the wildest ages there has been a wild popular justice, but always mixed with pa.s.sion and administered in hate; for justice takes a rude form with rude men, and becomes less mixed with hate and pa.s.sion in more civilized communities. Every progressive State revises its statutes and revolutionizes its const.i.tution from time to time, seeking to come closer to the utmost possible practical justice and right; and sometimes, following theorists and dreamers in their adoration for the ideal, by erecting into law positive principles of theoretical right, works practical injustice, and then has to retrace its steps.