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16°- PRINCE OF JERUSALEM
Morals and Dogma
Albert Pike
We no longer expect to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. To us
it has become but a symbol. To us the whole world is God's Temple, as is every
upright heart. To establish all over the world the New Law and Reign of Love,
Peace, Charity, and Toleration, is to build that Temple, most acceptable to God,
in erecting which Masonry is now engaged. No longer needing to repair to
Jerusalem to worship, nor to offer up sacrifices and shed blood to propitiate
the Deity, man may make the woods and mountains his Churches and Temples, and
worship God with a devout gratitude, and with works of charity and beneficence
to his fellow-men. Wherever the humble and contrite heart silently offers up its
adoration, under the overarching trees, in the open, level meadows, on the
hill-side, in the glen, or in the city's swarming streets; there is God's House
and the New Jerusalem.
The Princes of Jerusalem no longer sit as magistrates to
judge between the people; nor is their number limited to five. But their duties
still remain substantially the same, and their insignia and symbols retain their
old significance. Justice and Equity are still their characteristics. To
reconcile disputes and heal dissensions, to restore amity and peace, to soothe
dislikes and soften prejudices, are their peculiar duties; and they know that
the peacemakers are blessed.
Their emblems have been already explained. They are part of
the language of Masonry; the same now as it was when Moses learned it from the
Egyptian Hierophants.
Still we observe the spirit of the Divine law, as thus
enunciated to our ancient brethren, when the Temple was rebuilt, and the book of
the law again opened:
"Execute true judgment; and show mercy and compassion every
man to his brother. Oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the stranger nor
the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in his heart.
Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor;
execute the judgment of Truth and Peace in your gates; and love no false oath;
for all these I hate, saith the Lord.
"Let those who have power rule in righteousness, and Princes
in judgment. And let him that is a judge be as an hiding-place from the wind,
and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land. Then the vile person shall no more be called
liberal; nor the churl bountiful; and the work of justice shall be peace; and
the effect of justice, quiet and security; and wisdom and knowledge shall be the
stability of the times. Walk ye righteously and speak uprightly; despise the
gains of oppression, shake from your hands the contamination of bribes; stop not
your ears against the cries of the oppressed, nor shut your eyes that you may
not see the crimes of the great; and you shall dwell on high, and your place of
defence be like munitions of rocks."
Forget not these precepts of the old Law; and especially do
not forget, as you advance, that every Mason, however humble, is your brother,
and the laboring man your peer! Remember always that all Masonry is work, and
that the trowel is an emblem of the Degrees in this Council. Labor, when rightly
understood, is both noble and ennobling, and intended to develop man's moral and
spiritual nature, and not to be deemed a disgrace or a misfortune.
Everything around us is, in its bearings and influences,
moral. The serene and bright morning, when we recover our conscious existence
from the embraces of sleep; when, from that image of Death God calls us to a new
life, and again gives us existence, and His mercies visit us in every bright ray
and glad thought, and call for gratitude and content; the silence of that early
dawn, the hushed silence, as it were, of expectation; the holy eventide, its
cooling breeze, its lengthening shadows, its falling shades, its still and sober
hour; the sultry noontide and the stern and solemn midnight; and Spring-time,
and chastening Autumn; and Summer, that unbars our gates, and carries us forth
amidst the ever-renewed wonders of the world; and Winter, that gathers us around
the evening hearth:--all these, as they pass, touch by turns the springs of the
spiritual life in us, and are conducting that life to good or evil. The idle
watch-hand often points to something within us; and the shadow of the gnomon on
the dial often falls upon the conscience.
A life of labor is not a state of inferiority or degradation.
The Almighty has not cast man's lot beneath the quiet shades, and amid glad
groves and lovely hills, with no task to perform; with nothing to do but to rise
up and eat, and to lie clown and rest. He has ordained that Work shall be
done, in all the dwellings of life, in every productive field, in every busy
city, and on every wave of every ocean. And this He has done, because it has
pleased Him to give man a nature destined to higher ends than indolent repose
and irresponsible profitless indulgence; and because, for developing the
energies of such a nature, work was the necessary and proper element. We might
as well ask why He could not make two and two be six, as why He could not
develop these energies without the instrumentality of work. They are equally
impossibilities.
This, Masonry teaches, as a great Truth; a great moral
land-mark, that ought to guide the course of all mankind. It teaches its toiling
children that the scene of their daily life is all spiritual, that the very
implements of their toil, the fabrics they weave, the merchandise they barter,
are designed for spiritual ends; that so believing, their daily lot may be to
them a sphere for the noblest improvement. That which we do in our intervals of
relaxation, our church-going, and our book-reading, are especially designed to
prepare our minds for the action of Life. We are to hear and read and
meditate, that we may act well; and the action of Life is itself
the great field for spiritual improvement. There is no task of industry or
business, in field or forest, on the wharf or the ship's deck, in the office or
the exchange, but has spiritual ends. There is no care or cross of our daily
labor, but was especially ordained to nurture in us patience, calmness,
resolution, perseverance, gentleness, disinterestedness, magnanimity. Nor is
there any tool or implement of toil, but is a part of the great spiritual
instrumentality.
All the relations of life, those of parent, child, brother,
sister, friend, associate, lover and beloved, husband, wife, are moral,
throughout every living tie and thrilling nerve that bind them together. They
cannot subsist a day nor an hour without putting the mind to a trial of its
truth, fidelity, forbearance, and disinterestedness.
A great city is one extended scene of moral action. There is
no blow struck in it but has a purpose, ultimately good or bad, and therefore
moral. There is no action performed, but has a motive; and motives are the
special jurisdiction of morality. Equipages, houses, and furniture are symbols
of what is moral, and they in a thousand ways minister to right or wrong
feeling. Everything that belongs to us, ministering to our comfort or luxury,
awakens in us emotions of pride or gratitude, of selfishness or vanity; thoughts
of self-indulgence, or merciful remembrances of the needy and the destitute.
Everything acts upon and influences us. God's great law of
sympathy and harmony is potent and inflexible as His law of gravitation. A
sentence embodying a noble thought stirs our blood; a noise made by a child
frets and exasperates us, and influences our actions.
A world of spiritual objects, influences, and relations lies
around us all. We all vaguely deem it to be so; but he only lives a charmed
life, like that of genius and poetic inspiration, who communes with the
spiritual scene around him, hears the voice of the spirit in every sound, sees
its signs in every passing form of things, and feels its impulse in all action,
passion, and being. Very near to us lies the mines of wisdom; unsuspected they
lie all around us. There is a secret In the simplest things, a wonder in the
plainest, a charm in the dullest.
We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see
the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary mountains, great
water-falls, and galleries of art. And yet the world-wonder is all around us;
the wonder of setting suns, and evening stars, of the magic spring-time, the
blossoming of the trees, the strange transformations of the moth; the wonder of
the Infinite Divinity and of His boundless revelation. There is no splendor
beyond that which sets its morning throne in the golden East; no. dome sublime
as that of Heaven; no beauty so fair as that of the verdant, blossoming earth;
no place, however invested with the sanctities of old time, like that home which
is hushed and folded within the embrace of the humblest wall and roof.
And all these are but the symbols of things far greater and
higher. All is but the clothing of the spirit. In this vesture of time is
wrapped the immortal nature: in this show of circumstance and form stands
revealed the stupendous reality. Let man but be, as he is, a living soul,
communing with himself and with God, and his vision
becomes eternity; his abode, infinity; his home, the bosom of all-embracing
love.
The great problem of Humanity is wrought out in the humblest
abodes; no more than this is done in the highest. A human heart throbs beneath
the beggar's gabardine; and that and no more stirs with its beating the Prince's
mantle. The beauty of Love, the charm of friendship, the sacredness of Sorrow,
the heroism of Patience, the noble Self-sacrifice, these and their like, alone,
make life to be life indeed, and are its grandeur and its power. They are the
priceless treasures and glory of humanity; and they are not things of condition.
All places and all scenes are alike clothed with the grandeur and charm of
virtues such as these.
The million occasions will come to us all, in the ordinary
paths of our life, in our homes, and by our firesides, wherein we may act as
nobly, as if, all our life long, we led armies, sat in senates, or visited beds
of sickness and pain. Varying every hour, the million occasions will come in
which we may restrain our passions, subdue our hearts to gentleness and
patience, resign our own interest for another's advantage, speak words of
kindness and wisdom, raise the fallen, cheer the fainting and sick in spirit,
and soften and assuage the weariness and bitterness of their mortal lot. To
every Mason there will be opportunity enough for these. They cannot be written
on his tomb; but they will be written deep in the hearts of men, of friends, of
children, of kindred all around him, in the book of the great account, and, in
their eternal influences, on the great pages of the Universe.
To such a destiny, at least, my Brethren, let us all aspire!
These laws of Masonry let us all strive to obey! And so may our hearts become
true temples of the Living God! And may He encourage our zeal, sustain our
hopes, and assure us of success!
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