THE
FATHERHOOD OF GOD
by Robert Tipton
THE BUILDER JANUARY 1921
IN THE BELIEF
in the existence of God that many men of many minds and many
climes hold to, Freemasonry finds the one abiding bond of union
for which she has a reasonable belief that it will outdo time.
Hence, belief in God is the sovereign authoritative tenet of
the Institution; the fundamental dogma of the order. This
belief in God, Masons believe to be a primary conviction of the
human mind and is arrived at not only by virtue of the deepest
instinct of human nature itself, but by the sincerest reflection
and philosophic reasoning of which that man is capable. God,
then, is postulated as the first great cause. Even as things
cannot hang unless they hang onto something, so Masons believe
that the universe itself, revealing in its most general aspects,
plan and purpose, indicates an author and a supreme
architect behind it. This belief in intelligence as being
the cause of what is, to us, our universe - let us reemphasize
from a strictly modern philosophic standpoint - is not only the
wise conclusion of philosophers and sages, but is the first
profound conviction that men's minds, in early dawn when they
began to reason, first cherished. This is the two-fold
conclusion in brief, instinctive and rational, that is involved
in conception of God in the minds of Freemasons
universally. The relationship of God as Father is the great
motivating force that actuates them in striving for the
worldwide dominion of Peace and Goodwill. An ancient
philosopher, Philo, regarded God as Father because he had
created us, but the view that finds its focus in Masonry, and as
it is deducted from the men of the variety of faiths that kneel
at its altars, is that God is Father, not only because he
made us but because the laws of moral empire indicate a
ruling conscience, and that the life of God as it is apprehended
through the lives of the wisest and noblest of the race that has
lived, reveals that He loves us. The tokens of such love - if
wisdom, knowledge, and love be in any wise indications of
God's nature - He has not confined to any particular people.
"God," saith the Christian's gospel, "maketh the sun to shine on
the good and the evil; on the just and on the unjust," and in
that last great awakening, according to the wondrous vision of
last things, which is to be cherished as the choicest
summing up of the judgment of God upon the lives and deeds
of men, we would discover men coming from the east and the west
and sharing the privileges of eternity, while the arrogant and
selfish, who themselves had claimed all knowledge, would be
excluded. Masonry, then, does not hold to any arrogant claim
regarding the religious genius of any particular people or sect,
but recognizes light and truth as it emanates from the lives of
men everywhere, past or present. Long and painful has
been the struggle of our poor humanity that has made us
conscious that God is One; sovereign over all, and that there
are no other gods but him. And while this indicates immeasurable
achievement for men, men the world over have not yet
discovered any ground for argument upon the character of
God, save as they recognize his universal Fatherhood. It is in
this recognition of Fatherhood that Masonry gathers men
together, that they may the better work for human happiness in a
bonded relationship, in which they hold to one thing in
common, rather than in divided relationships, where
disagreements forever defeat noble purposes. Belief in
God is reasonably and naturally followed in a worship of Him by
most men, and it is in this worship of Him that the differences
abounding cause men to be divided into sects, cults, and
churches. That all men would agree upon one way of worship and
adoring God may be devoutly wished, but intolerance and
bigotry are the distinguishing marks of any who endeavour to
coerce others into believing as they do. Hence, the genius of
Masonry is found in its permitting diversity in unity, in things
relative to faith and practice in the worship of God. As far as
its purpose is apprehended by its followers, it is to enjoin
men everywhere, that the creature owes a duty to the Creator,
and that duty is most worthily revealed by imitating that
beneficence of heart toward his kind which he apprehends God to
be continually disposing toward him. In the light of this,
the preservation of the freedom of worship is one of the
glorious purposes of the Masonic Institution and since it has
zealously in the past preserved this freedom of worship, to the
enhancing of the happiness of men everywhere, its intention to
perpetuate this freedom is its one clear, prophetic
pronouncement as regards life today. In the light of the
conception of the Fatherhood of God held to by the Freemasons,
it at once becomes imperative that we inquire how, in terms of
civic duty we can acquaint ourselves with all that is involved
in such belief, so as to manifest the practical bearing of such
a doctrine upon our lives and conduct. We are well aware of
the contempt that so frequently finds expression among Masons
for what appears as religious Phariseeigm. Too often this
observation has been made while absolutely neglecting what may
be regarded by the profane as Phariseeism in us. The very
ordinances and outward observances which we have condemned
in others, too frequently we have been guilty of ourselves. The
instruction acquired through the ritual has claimed the assent
of our minds, but too frequently it has failed to find
interpretation in our daily lives. Let us reflect on this.
There is little virtue in doing things for others because we are
compelled by obligations to do them, but when we do things
calculated to enrich and bless others, whether they are legally
bound to us or not, and further, when we do them from pure or
impersonal consideration of hope of gain, but for the very
love of doing good itself, then we are making tangible
confession without verbal utterance of our belief in God as the
Father, and we are dealing with our kind in a way that we
believe He deals with all of us. Masonry, would devolve
into a narrow, secular institution should it fail to apprehend
the teaching that is most deeply imbedded in its very
constitution. The universality of brotherhood is emphasized
when the variety of religious confession and racial distinction
is represented within its body, and as we would do for those
within the precincts of the Temple, because they are there
recognized in the bonds of brotherhood, so should we do for
the world, for their being there is but symbolic of world
brotherhood, and is intended - if symbolism has any virtue to
impress indelibly upon our minds and hearts any lesson - our
obligation to love and serve all mankind. Religious
intolerance finds its genesis when God's Fatherhood is regarded
as a limited thing. Masonry seeks to instruct men in the laws
of moral empire which, ruling over the lives of men, will
bring them into harmonious relationship known as The
Universal Brotherhood, that has been the devout prayer of
all noble men in whom the light of God has shone, since the damn
of time. And its wisdom is amply justified in its bringing
together men of the great religions of earth on a common meeting
ground, where the belief in God is the band that binds, but
where they make their separate interpretations of the
character of God subsidiary to the great thing that each
subscribes to, and which stated simply, they discern to be the
will of God. When the great congress of religions met in
Chicago in 1893 it was the grave concern of some as to how
the great gathering should be opened, and what religious
representative should have the preferential honour. Finally it
was happily agreed that what is commonly known in the world as
the Lord's Prayer was an expression appropriate to the common
feelings and religious emotions represented there. And if we are
to make manifest the great key-note of that prayer that
links men in the great common cause of serving humanity after
declaration of their belief in God as the universal Father, it
is the utterance asking that the will of that Father shall be
accomplished on earth, and that his kingdom shall be realized
upon the earth. The ascription that "God is Father," finds
itself a complimentary part in the brotherhood that men evince
when they recognize God as Father. Having elucidated at
length on the Masonic conception of God, and an unqualified
recognition of his nearness to the Hindu as well as the
Christian, and to emphasize truly that God must care as much for
a naked cannibal as for the most cultured or refined, it
behooves us to investigate what effect this doctrine has upon
our practical life and well-being in the State. To make it yet
more concrete, we must speak not only of "the State," but of
these United States. Religious liberty is one of the foundation
stones upon which this Republic is built, but strange as it
may seem, we are yet but beginning to apprehend the true
significance of religious liberty. A dispassionate analysis of
our country will reveal many sad things that have brought misery
in their wake; arising generally from the subsequent bigotry
of those who sought these shores and claimed for themselves
religious liberty. The persecuted - history is not slow in
revealing to us - have too often been transformed into
persecutors. It is then, indeed, a gleam of the divine that is
reflected in the Constitution of the United States when it
bespeaks for the maintenance of religious toleration and the
lasting preservation of religious liberty. As Freemasons in
these United States and in view of the thing that is guaranteed
unto us by the Constitution we must be on our guard against any
religious sect that arrogantly ascribes to itself the
holding of the only true and final religious knowledge and
authority. The right to elect or damn has never been bequeathed
to any man or any organization, and religions as all other
things of time seem to have had their rise and wane according
to the proportion of good or evil that they rendered the
world. Bigotry and fanaticism, which has too frequently resolved
itself into cupidity, cruelty and persecution, has ever been the
chief characteristic of religions that lost the vision of
toleration, and in the toleration of religious differences by
those who subscribe to the one great doctrine of Belief in
God as the Father of men Masonry seeks to inspire men to
labour and to pray for the divine event when Brother hood will
grace the earth. back to top
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