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SPEECHES OF CHARLES LEVI WOODBURY

Deputy Grand Master, 1869-1871

AT GRAND LODGE, SEPTEMBER 1875

From New England Freemason, Vol. II, No. 9, September 1875, Page 427:

The Antiquity of Masonry.

An Address Delivered before the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, at the Quarterly Communication, Sept. 8, 1875, by R. W. Charles Levi Woodbury, Past Deputy Grand Master.

A little more than a century and a half ago, Freemasonry, except for mystic purposes, suspended handicraft labors and devoted itself to the speculative part of the art. Before that time both kinds were carried on together, surely as far back as the oldest (A.D. 1599) Lodge record which has survived to our day. How much earlier Masonry included speculative subjects is a question where opinions have varied, and men have been inclined to dogmatize variously. Masonry is the oldest art whose works are extant. To the Freemason it would be interesting to know if it had, as our traditions say, always a speculative side, and also whether it has had a continuous existence as an art, or has at times been lost and again invented or rediscovered. These are the questions I propose to examine to-night. If the art of Masonry was speculative as well as practical in ancient times, and yet was lost afterwards, our claim to antiquity could not mount higher than the period of its rediscovery; but if there has been a constant succession, all evidence of speculative opinions is of historical value.

Without troubling you with my opinions, I shall lay before you some evidence gathered on the descent and the early organization of Masonry, not claiming that these facts are conclusive, but asking whether they do not justify further research into this interesting subject.

It will be admitted that if we find fragments of usages, designs, aswell as tools and methods of work of the ancient Masons in use in the same Craft in modern times, an inference of a continuous channel of descent is presumptively established. It will not be disputed that the ancestors of modern Masons, like other men, lived in those days ; that then commerce existed, people migrated, barbarians became civilized by contact with enlightened people, arts were transmitted through castes, counting a descent thus for thousands of years in some countries, and elsewhere by initiation and instruction, from generation to generation. Thus Masonic organization, supported by successive initiation of apprentices, may have existed from the early times. Let us inquire whether Masonry has not always been a spiritual man of brains and brawny armR, uniting the best culture, learning, intellect and taste of its time with practical, hard-working art. In the remains of the most ancient religions which have been handed down to us are found exoteric and esoteric doctrines, together with particular initiations through which the select few were gradually raised to the knowledge of the mysteries and higher thoughts included in their rituals and dogmas.

The earth is strewn with the wrecks of ancient temples, whose relics attest that all religions had recourse to the Masonic art to express their highest acts of devotion and oblation. The adepts who constructed them must have held intimate relations with the hierarchies of those creeds whose symbols and mysteries are entwined in the temples of their faith. The antiquarian draws with confidence from the forms and symbols of these ruins testimony to supplement the meagre remains handed down through literary channels, and we also may find something there of the organization and lore of those early Freemasons that will be instructive to compare with things of to-day. There are strong reasons for thinking that the art of Masonry was not an original discovery in each of the various ancient centres of civilization. It is probable that it was invented, cultivated and developed in some centre, and from thence was carried by its professors to other and growing countries, at the invitation of religious or political rulers, to give enduring expression to the feelings of reverence of the people, and to the exposition of dogmas, by embodying in holy and public buildings symbols and configurations designed to recall to the mind important doctrines oftheir theology. Such, indeed, is one of the objects of Masonry at this day.

The travelling propensities of the great master workmen of antiquity are verified by the records. We find Greeks of celebrity working in Asia Minor; and even working in Egypt under the Macedonian dynasty. Thus, Cleomanes planned the city of Alexandria; and Dinocratus not only rebuilt the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, in Asia Minor, but was long engaged in important works at Alexandria; and Sostratus, of Gnidus, built the Pharos at Alexandria. We find also Hermodorus, of Salamis, and Samus and Batrachus, of Laconia, and Appolodorus, of Damascus, erecting important temples at Rome.

Four masters worked on the foundations of the Temple of Jove at Athens. Ictinius, with the aid of Calicrates and perhaps other masters, built the Parthenon. We also read in Chronicles that King David gathered and set the strangers—Masons—to hew wrought stones to build the house of God. In Kings we find that Masons were sent from Tyre to King Solomon, and that Hiram's Masons and stone-squarers, and Solomon's Masons and stone-squarers did hew the great and costly stones to lay the foundation of the Temple: In those ages it thus appears that art was not translated to another country, any more than true art now can be, by imitation, but that practical skilled workmen themselves travelled to the place, and established the style sought for by making the moulds and plans of the details, instructing, overseeing the construction, and governing the workmen.

The Master Mason's talent is manifested in every curve and joint, and even in the very setting of the work. Plato says in the Eleatic Stranger, "The master workman does not work himself, but is the ruler of the workmen." – "He contributes knowledge, but not manual labor, and may therefore be justly said to share in theoretical science. But he ought not, when he has formed a judgment, to regard his function at an end, like the calculator ; he must assign to the individual workmen their appropriate task, until they have completed the work."

Plutarch says of Phidias, the celebrated sculptor who was the chief superintendent of all the works of Pericles : "He directed all and was chief overseer of all for Pericles." Able writers on architecture, commenting on these and other evidences, affirm that in the Greek, Egyptian and Mediaeval Architecture, the architect was always a master workman personally skilled in the manual part of the art, to whom the beauty, solidity and invention in their structures are due, and are now calling for a return to that relation, declaiming that their late separation into distinct branches is deteriorating to art itself.

The organization thus shadowed out has three degrees: the tyro or apprentice, the trained and educated craftsman, and the Master Mason, who combined the skill of all the others with the high theoretic science and skill as a manager and overseer in architectural matters. It was his genius that gave form and styleto the venerated Temple from its foundation to its last coping-stone, and compelled the warm sandstone and the cold marble to become a symbolic witness of the esoteric as well as the exoteric faith of the employers. It was he who, as the progress of kindred sciences afforded new knowledge, applied it to his art, whether in the line of strength, grace, beauty, or economy.

The ancient Master Mason, as a result of the reliance of ancient religions on monumental symbology, necessarily had intimate relations with the religious chiefs of the country where he practised his art, had perfect knowledge of their esoteric symbology, planned and executed the forms in which they were established on the monuments ; his successors also were their pertinacious conservators ; thus grew the conventional in religious Masonry.

One historian of Egypt (Sharp) affirms that even from the earliest times these sculptors and designers of the temples were of the priestly caste or order of society ; and another celebrated investigator of Egyptian antiquities, Wilkinson, also includes "the sacred sculptors, draftsmen and Masons" in the priestly grade. They were the only Egyptian craft, except land surveyors, elevated to this social rank.

The priestly caste had, we know, those mystic initiations which spread from ancient Egypt over the world, and of which so much has been written. Whether the Masons were initiated in all or only a part of these mysteries can only be inferred, but we may infer that higher initiations were conferred as the candidate advanced in his art.

Vitruvius defined Masonry, near 2,000 years ago, as "A science arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning." Plato, as we have seen, four centuries earlier, spoke of it as a science. Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, we have seen, considered the loan of Master Masons as worthy to be repaid by the concession of twenty cities; and the description of his varied talents in King Hiram's letter accords with the requisite talents elsewhere demanded for the grade. Those who conceive the Mason as a mere wall-builder have need to enlarge their understanding.

An able reviewer of Fergusson's History of Architecture, in the London Quarterly, says, "To those but little educated in the ways of art the master workman is a mystery, his influence and existence are half doubted, half denied, or wholly misconceived." In the true antique spirit do our old Constitutions inculcate the study of the seven liberal arts. It was through these that the Fraternity advanced their art from rude beginnings until there arose a creative intellect from among them, who could embody all extant, mystical, cosmic science into one Temple, symbolical and monumental of the speculative science shut within the breasts of Master Masons, open to those who held the key, but sealed to the uninitiated and profane. Such a monument, signed astronomically with the date of its construction, was the pyramid of Gizeh; contrived by its initiated and learned builders not only to embody their religious mystery, but to be capable of yielding to the analysis of the future antiquarian and physicist the key to the knowledge of the state of Astronomy, Geodesy, and kindred arts at the era of its construction. Such, also, were probably the builders of the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, whose hidden stores of knowledge are now being revealed to us. In like organization, and possibly of like caste, were the devoted bands of more creeds than one, who, united with brotherly love, raised the first temple at Jerusalem, and those, too, who, fresh from the Chaldean plains, labored with Nehemiah or Zerubbabel, their swords girded to their sides, to rebuild and restore the despoiled dwelling-place of the God of Israel. Was there no initiation in things sacred among these Syrian builders also? Was there no hidden wisdom, no speculation on ineffable things in their Craft ? What mystery the inspired psalmist hangs about the corner-stone! How grandly the author of Job puts, in the words of the Almighty,

the Masonic character of his work of creation : "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest? or who has stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who hath laid the corner-stone thereof? When the morning stars sang together, and the sons of Elohim shouted for joy?" How, also, the prophet Amos describes the Lord standing on a true wall with the implements of the Masonic Craft, a plumb line or a trowel in his hand, declaring he will set a plumb line in Israel. Was not the Masonic artisan favored of Heaven? Did not Aholi'ab and Bazaleel work on plans communicated through Moses, "with every wise-hearted man in whom the Lord had put wisdom and understanding?" Had Huram and his craftsmen no aid from inspired kings and prophets in those works whose forms, ornaments, and structure typified occult mysteries? Have the three great creeds of this day, the Christian, the Jewish or the Mahomedan, ceased to revere, in that long perished Temple, the symbol of holy aspiration? There is no need to multiply illustrations of the speculative science of the early Masonic Craft. Let us consider the traces of a succession in the Craft of Masonry.

In the old Masonic MSS. of Constitutions, printed in facsimile from manuscript No. 23,198, edited by Matthew Cook, and written probably in the 15th century, Nimrod charges (fol. 380) the Masons, whom he sends to his Cousin Assur, to build a city, that they serve Assur faithfully, but that "ye govern you against your lord" (Assur) "and among yourselves."

This Masonic tradition of the Eastern life of their Craft is curious when we reflect that to this day strangers in the East are governed by the laws and consul of their own country, rather than of the nation they sojourn among. Such a system applied to sojourning Masons of one country, protected by their own country, working together in another, would naturally produce the organization of Freemasonry. In this light we find the Latin vulgate carefully distinguishes Hiram's Masons from Solomon's Masons (Kings v. caementarii Huram.) Early as this MS. bears date, it must be admitted that some of the organization of speculative Masonry is shown in this extract. The free spirit of self-government sheds a ray of light here of great significance.

The Brother who believes there is something in Freemasonry deeper than its admirable morality and generosity, something that underlies and gives expression to its universality, something behind its symbols that has brought from antique times a flavor like the odor of Shittim wood of the tabernacle, may boldly enter on the investigation ; and if his industry never slackens, his faith never tires, and he has access to the means of investigation, light from the East will break on the mysteries of that strange gem bearing the seals of the royal Solomon, and his right royal Phoenician brother which is before him.

Andrea, in A. D. 1610, in his confession of R. & C, wrote, "He who can see the great letters and characters that God wrote on the edifice of heaven and earth, and can use them to his profit, is already prepared for us, though himself unaware of it."

It is my purpose here not to enter the hidden wisdom of this ro3-al and reverential art, nor to discourse of those mysteries of that Craft of which the same author says, "God has surrounded us with his cloud, that to us, his servants, no force can be applied or directed, so that, had he the eye of an eagle, no one could see or recognize us."

Architectural Links.

By the aid of antiquaries and archaeologists, facts may be established, from which the inductions of transmission of the Masonic art necessarily follow.

Reading the stone records from the vantage ground of antiquarian investigators, you will find yet extant many bonds uniting the past with the present.

Masons' Marks are the marks the various craftsmen put upon then- work to indicate to the overseer who has done the job, in order that, the quality being inspected, it may be measured and paid for. The industry which unlocked the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the cuneiform of the Chaldees, which has given access to the Vedas and the Zend Avesta, will aid the Masonic student in this undertaking also.

They are still in use in operative Masonry, and were particularly and memorably known in speculative Masonry long before attention was directed to the subject in connection with oriental antiquities. These marks, many of them identical, have been traced on the stones in great religious works, in all ages of which remains exist. The Gothic Cathedral and the Roman Basilica show them. Sir Gore Ousely, sixty years ago, thought he had found the relics of an extinct and novel language on the stones at the ruined city of Persepolis; what he copied turned out, on subsequent investigation, to be Masons' marks.

The investigations of Col. Warren, under the auspices of the Topographical Engineers of England, lately made on the site of the Temple of King Solomon, at Jerusalem, have been fruitful in this particular. In the lower courses of the wall which sustains the platform whereon the Temple stood, the courses now covered fifty to ninety feet deep with broken work and other debris, he found abundance of these Masons' marks on the stones lying in the courses, and also in the vaults and tunnels under the platform. There for near three thousand years they have remained hidden from human sight. Scholars recognize many of these marks as Phoenician characters, thereby giving another confirmation to the declaration of Kings and Chronicles that the craftsmen and art of Masonry were imported into Jerusalem from Phoenicia.

Still other researches in Palestine, since attention has been drawn to these witnesses on the state of the art, have discovered them, at the ruins of Palmyra in the desert, upon some mosques of early date, also in Hebron and many other places in Syria; and one authority says that on Egyptian temples far earlier in date than the Temple of Solomon, the like marks are found still fresh, after thirty- five centuries. Some of these marks of Masons have another purpose, viz., to connect the stone with the plan of the building, and indicate the course in which it is to be laid and its position. Simple as this link in the chain of evidence may appear, it not only connects the antique with the modern Masonic art, but is a source of other important deductions.

In India, also, these Mason marks are found in the stones of ancient temples, and, what is remarkable, often in conjunction with several symbols of Masonic Lodges of to-day. The scholars and philologists who have gone so far in collecting evidence of Aryan origin and migration have considered all these marks with that purpose in their minds; and many are struck with the number of them which resemble or are identical with the ancient caste marks of India.

I regret I cannot reproduce here the drawings of these marks; some are to be found in Lyon's history of Masonry in Scotland, others in King's remains of Gnostic art; and others in Jennings' recondite work on a branch of our Craft; others are found in the Orient, unveiled, and in the recovery of Jerusalem; others doubtless exist in works to which my attention has not been called. Some I have seen in the Nabethian alphabet. In due time archaeological students will collect and discourse on the teachings of the whole; forming, as they do, a chain of evidence of the progress and succession of the Masonic art, through many peoples and many ages, we must regard the further prosecution of their labors on these simple relics with the deepest interest. It is argued by learned architects, and I believe now conceded, that the arch can be traced from the era of the Pyramid to the present time ; and Wilkinson says even the pointed Gothic and Saracenic arches are deducible from the earliest Egyptian. Various columns and styles of architecture of ancient ages retaining their conventional proportions and capitals, sometimes with a few modifications, but oftener in purity, are accepted and in use to:day.

Thus also of the decorations known as the egg and tongue mouldings. The tools of the ancient Egyptian artisans have been found, and resemble in shape those in use at this day. The mallet and the wedge were found in the Pyramids, and Burton also found one in a tomb, with a basket of drills, chisels, bows, etc., that had lain there perhaps twenty centuries before Cambyses invaded Egypt.

The working dress of the Egyptian Mason of the old times consisted of the apron, similar to what it now is; judging from the paintings yet extant, this, with a pair of sandals, constituted his entire working dress in hot weather.

My knowledge of Egyptian lore does not enable me to affirm with confidence the inference which may strike some of my readers; but it is singular that several of the numerous Egyptian kings, whose statues have been preserved, wear the apron without their royal robes. In the list of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, published by Sharpe, No. 61 is the statue of the King Pthamen Miothph, son of Ramises 2d, whose date is about 1120 B. C, whose only clothing is a short apron; this figure is given, ch. 2, sect. 46, in the history of Egypt by the same author. A cast from his tomb also shows him wearing a similar apron. No. 26, of the same list, is the statue of King Oimenepthah, 2d, wearing no clothing but sandals and the apron. A cast from his tomb, also in the museum, shows the apron under a transparent gauze robe. Elsewhere I have seen drawings of two royal figures at the portal of some temple or tomb wearing the apron alone; but I do not recall the place where they are found. As everything of this sort was symbolic in Egypt, we may speculate whether the apron so worn without the nsual royal robes, by a king, the head of the priestly caste, did not indicate an initiation, undcscribed by antiquarians, into the arcana of the sacred sculptors, draughtsmen and Masons who pertained to this caste. (The royal apron, described by Wilkinson as being part of the royal dross, bears a striking similarity to the style of apron worn by Grand Masters. From his description it was worn as the Grand Master wears his.)

The method of work has remained much the same; the Egyptian broached work was as perfect as it is now. The chisel draft on the Cyclopean stones in the Temple foundations at Jerusalem is just as on a dressed stone of to-day.

Another class of proofs of descent are found in the mystic designs of the old masters, carved on their slabs or constructed in their edifices, which are still in use. Layard, the explorer of the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, was astonished to find the figure known as the Greek honeysuckle perfectly designed and used there ; thence it passed into the architecture of ancient Greece, thence into Western Europe, and through modern church architecture to the present. It is of common us,e now, in its identical original form, both in Protestant and Catholic churches. What a proof of the tenacity with

which the conventional clings in the Craft, where Zoroastrian, Chaldee, Pagan and Christian temples, in a succession of twenty-six hundred years, inherit and transmit the same mystic symbols alike to innovators and successors! Students also have traced and written

many learned works, showing how certain mystic emblems of a faith, so early as almost to be prehistorical in its origin, have been transmitted, such as dome, pinnacle, and spire, through all successive eras to the present age ; and, although their symbolic meaning has occulted from the general public, not merely retaining but gaining favor as new appliances render the art more capable of executing such designs with brilliancy. What traveller has not paused to gaze on the spires of Cologne and Strasburg, or to admire the domes of St Peter, St. Sophia, St. Isaac, St. Paul, the latter the glorious work of our modern accepted Grand Master Wren. The round towers of Ireland and the needle of Cleopatra bear witness like these to the continuity of the conventional in the Masonic art. The mystic lesson derived from the form of the church, mosque, or temple in all ages, and held esoteric, is another link.

Another curious instance of the conventional perversion of a symbol is in the brazen pillars which stood before the door of the Temple of Solomon. They are reproduced by the later Phoenicians in the pillars of Hercules, which stood at the port of the Mediterranean ; but at this day, in Phoenician-settled Spain, they are borne on the reverse of the silver dollar. Thus that which was once a symbol of life, the mystic basis of religion, has, among the profane, sunk to represent a mere dollar's worth of earth. Truly, Solomon's successors are wiser than kings.

Considering the vast and varied knowledge on antique remains gathered by modern discoverers, we are justified to anticipate that ere long it will be demonstrated that conventional Masonic art was so allied with theology in ancient times that every part of a temple taught a special lesson of its own ; that form and symbol gave every stone a signification as perfect as a hieroglyphic character; and an initiate could read intelligibly the ideas embodied by the architect Mason in the building of Egyptian and Semitic temples as if they were written in the common language of the country. In those days there were sermons in stone, and the Champnllion of art bearing the key is not many generations distant. Much of symbology, in the course of its long descent and many migrations, has become so conventional a part of art that the original meaning has grown very obscure. Where the religion of a country has fundamentally changed, the forms and decorations of the temples, because they are symbolic, sometimes become modified to suit the change ; but still, as Masonry is one art, they largely retain the impress of the past. Of this, did time allow, I could give many illustrations. So, also, inventions in the beanty of design have occasionally modified, but 1 think never obliterated, the conventional aspect of religious symbology. Egypt, Greece and Rome still are three radiant lights of the Masonic studio. For the burnt and buried Babylon, for the desolate Jerusalem, for the moulded Semitic architecture of Tyre, of the plains, and of the mountains, we hold our Lodge of sorrow, and cheer our longing souls with the faintest relics of their golden glory. In putting forth my propositions, 1 feel that some will be appalled at the length of time included in the subject, and will hardly realize that many other parts of our civilization can be traced clearly, descending from prototypes as distant as Greek Masonry from our era.

Modern scholars and divines readily admit that the metaphysics of Aristotle, of Plato, and of that branch of Platonism that mingled with the Chaldean and Zoroastian metaphysics in the school of Alexandria, are at the root of all present divisions and diversities in schools of theology. Modern science has reasoned its way from observation and proof, until now it declares the doctrines taught by Democritus, three centuries before our era, include the highest known expression of the cosmic theory of matter. Pythagoras, who brought into Europe from Egypt the helio centric theory of the universe, after a long obscurity, has his merits again recognized, and Euclid is of equal authority now as when he prepared his geometry. Three of the four book religions of the world are more than seventeen centuries old. In literature, the drama and oratory, we look to the classic ages for models. In the practical arts, those which yet depend on hand-skill, rather than on machinery, had then the habitudes they now have, joined to even greater skill. The goldsmith, the metal worker, the gem engraver, the sculptor and stone cutter, the shipwright, the harness-maker and the hand-loom weaver, plied their trades and their art, descended generation by generation through their apprentices, moving from one centre of trade and wealth to another, in accordance with the laws of prosperity which govern civilization. Figure weaving and the India shawl are older than the days of Abraham, and the .hand-loom in its pristine form is still used to weave the latter. The potter's wheel is still unimproved. The ship of to-day bears on her stern the carved lares aud symbols which her prototypes bore in the days of Pagan Rome. The fashionable jewelry of to-day is copied from Etruscan and Egyptian models. The fine arts revel in the goddesses, nymphs and cupids of Greek design. Some of the mummies of Egypt reveal teeth plugged with gold as well as if an American dentist had tried his torturing tools on them. My limits forbid more illustrations of the conventional ruts other artisans have lived and died in for more than sixty generations.

The present sum of human knowledge has been longer in accumulating than the records of history bear witness. Even the few arts which are of modern origin, with rare exceptions, lean for support on more ancient arts. What reason is there to withhold from the Craft of Masonry the same inferences of a descent from the ancient Craft which is so readily accorded to other arts? Research into architecture would furnish further illustrations of the descent of this art, important in my view because the conventional images in art are the highest evidence of its continuous transmission. We must deal with the past from such materials as time, war and fanaticism have spared to come down to us. Masonry is replete with the actual relics of its ancient work. These attest for themselves. In the vulgar sense, except a few papyri snatched from Egyptian tombs, there are now extant no written records of those days which are original. There is no Jewish or Christian MS. extant earlier than the fourth, perhaps than the seventh, century in the date of its writing.

The conjecture as to the accuracy of a copy is sadly complicated if it is the copy of copies many times removed from the original; but if copies of various known dates agree in the text, it is held proof of an authentic line of descent, although the entire chain of copies back to the original is not produced or accounted for. The rocks last longer than parchment or paper ; and chisel marks endure better than ink. The memory of man spans little over seventy years; beyond that, written records or stone records alike rest on reasonable conjecture for proof of authenticity. The dead generations cannot be gathered from the valley of dry bones and paraded as witnesses ; you must interrogate the relics of their works and abide the reasonable inferences deduced from them. Eastern art did not fall with Egypt, Babylon or Rome. The light of earlier times had not faded away when the energy of the Arab followers of Mahomet revived its flickering beams for nine centuries more. Upon these sources Europe drew for knowledge and skill in art, science and philosophy—certainly till the close of the fifteenth century. Oriental philosophy again interwove its metaphysics into European theology. Even the Crusaders, poor soldiers of the cross, learned not only war and art from their adversaries, but were charged with returning with their creeds imbued with more than one emanation from Eastern mysticism. Anderson, a hundred and fifty years ago, claimed they also brought Freemasonry from the East. Masonry, which had decayed in Europe with the eclipse of Roman civilization, became illumined by association with Saracenic skill, invented and perfected the Gothic art, and gradually, through Fraternities of trained Maeons, spread it over Europe.

In the practical hands of the Master Masons it grew in grace and beauty, until it entirely superseded the debased Roman styles, and became the devotional art of mediaeval times, symbolizing the mystic ideas of the dominant religion in those sublime cathedrals, still the objects of religious art. The organization of the Craft resembled that of the Egyptian and Greek of yore. The Masters were practical as well as scientific in architecture ; the fellow-craft had the same manual skill, but inferior attainments, in the higher parts of the profession; the apprentice was glorious as usual over his modest progress. Their initiations and signs bound them into a close fraternity of grades. At York Minster, A. D. 1370, their contracts with the Chapter provided none should work on the chapel without the common consent of the Master and keepers of the work (Wardens?) and Master Masons. Their Mason marks are yet extant. The secrets of their art and Craft were kept by oral tradition, and protected by sacred obligations ; and yet they were so free and liberal as often to admit high dignitaries of church and state, whose taste in art they were desirous of cultivating, into the mysteries of their Fraternity, which in truth was the only school for art in Europe. Like the Masons of Hiram of yore, these were travelling bodies, moving from one scene of labor to another, and, as they chose to contract, being in the direct employ of church or state, they were enabled to secure rare and valuable privileges indicated to the thoughtful by the name of Freemasons.

I cannot, indeed, claim for them, as for their Egyptian predecessors, that they were of priestly caste, yet they held like relations to church and state; for kings and bishops then rejoiced to be of the Masonic Craft, and still seek their Lodges with flattering alacrity.

Let me cite some mediaeval illustrations, drawn from the reviewer in the London Quarterly, before referred to :—

"Benedict Abbot, of Warmouth, in A. D. 676, crossed the ocean to Gaul, and brought back with him stone masons to make a church after the Roman fashion."

"In A. D. 1174, by the just but occult judgment of God, the church of Christ at Canterbury was consumed by fire." The monks took counsel with the English and French Masons, and finally committed the work to William of Sens, "a man active and ready, and, as a workman, skilful both in wood and stone," who "went on preparing all things needful for the work, either of himself or by the agency of others."

Thus also in the reign of Henry III., Bishop Grosstete describes the duty of the master : "In all kinds of workmanship the master of the works and workmen has the full power, as indeed it is his duty, to investigate, and examine," etc. ; "and this he should do, not only through others, but when it is needful with his own hands." Hope says, "Many ecclesiastics of the highest rank conferred additional weight on the order of Freemasons by becoming its members."

"In 1442 King Henry VI. became a Mason. Afterwards, in conjunction with Thirske, Master Mason of the chapel of King Henry V., the king laid out the plan of his own sepulchre."

Investigations have cumulated instances of gentlemen of quality that were crafted members of Masonic Lodges in Great Britain elsewhere than at York, during more than a century prior to the London organization of 1717. Gov. Belcher, of Massachusetts, states he was admitted in 1704; Elias Ashmole, in his diary, says he and Col. Mainwaring were so made in 1646 in England; and the records in Scotland, cited by Lyon and by Hughan, among many others, show Boswell, of Auchinleck, was present as a member in 1600, and made his Masonic mark on the record of Edinburgh Lodge. The records of Kilwinning and of the Lodge at Aberdeen show numerous earls, lords, ministers, lawyers, merchants, etc., were members in that century. (The Statute 84 Ed. III. ch. 9, A. D. 1360, and of 3 Hy. VI., A.D. 1428, clearly enough indicate there were three progressive degrees among the Masons; that they were oath-bound, and held congregations, chapters and general assemblies, and also that the chief masters often took works by contract in gross.)

I forbear further citations, nor shall I attempt to tell you when or how these Masons absorbed the speculative parts of their royal art, which we, their successors, yet practise under the landmarks of their Ancient Constitutions. There was something elevated in the esoteric doctrines of these travelling Lodges, that drew to them not merely the learned and generous among the great, but also the few believers in human progress, and the scattered but earnest seekers after the deep truths occulted in nature's laboratory, long before Freemasonry ceased to be a manual art.

With the Renaissance, came in vogue the separation of the duties of an architect from those of a Master Mason; but we have copies of Constitutions, written earlier than this, which show that modern Freemasonry descended from the cathedral-building craft, whose Master Masons were men of science as well as of manual skill.

Conscious that I have merely begun to collect the available materials to illustrate my subject, I should apologize for presenting an unfinished labor to your attention, were my object other than to arrest hasty conclusions, by showing that candor requires this broad field for exploration should be fairly exhausted before the annalist or the Craft are entitled to sit in judgment on the question of the origin of the royal art, or to demand that this, which now rests in tradition, an open question, shall be relegated into the field of established truth. Late historians, elucidating early records, have wrought confusion on many disparagers of the early history of our organization, and I trust to be pardoned for thinking that even traditions are capable of receiving much light, when their credibility is examined with a catholic spirit by appropriate tests. The accumulated evidence of descent of many designs, symbols, decorations, tools and usages now in use, their conventional character, the similarity of organization of the Craft, the liberal knowledge possessed by its Masters, the broad scope of the science of Masonry from the first, and the mystic flavor it seems always to have drawn from its exterior connections, have deeply impressed my mind. The Masonic student alone can collate evidence from these sources with success. The darkness comprehended not the light, and I may conclude by quoting the language of one who seems to have known the light in the sixteenth century : —

"And though our structure should be seen by a hundred thousand men, it will ever remain untouched, uninjured, unseen, and even hidden in all eternity to the Godless world, Sub umbra alarum tuam Jehovah, until that millennial epoch when that which is now known to few, and portrayed secretly in pictures and symbols, shall fill the whole earth, and be loudly and freely announced."

AT GRAND LODGE, MARCH 1877

Charles Levi Woodbury