ALTAR
A Masonic Lodge is a symbol of the world as it was thought to be in the olden
times. Our ancient Brethren had a profound insight when they saw that the world
is a Temple, over-hung by a starry canopy at night, lighted by the journeying
sun by day, wherein man goes forth to his labor on a checker-board of lights and
shadows, joy and sorrows, seeking to reproduce on earth the law and order of
heaven. The visible world was but a picture or reflection of the invisible, and
at its center stood the Altar of sacrifices, obligation and adoration.
While we hold a view of the world very unlike that held by our Ancient
Brethren - knowing it to round, not flat and square - yet their insight is still
true. The whole idea was that man, if he is to build either a House of Faith, or
an order of society that is to endure, he must initiate the laws and principles
of the world in which he lives. That is also our dream and design; the love of
it ennobles our lives; it is our labor and worship. To fulfill it we too need
wisdom and help from above; and so at the center of the Lodge stands the same
Altar - older than all Temples, as old as life itself - a focus of faith and
fellowship, at once a symbol and shrine of that unseen element of thought and
yearning that all men are aware of and which no one can define.
Upon this earth there is nothing more impressive than the silence of a
company of human beings bowed together at an Altar. No thoughtful man but at
some time has mused over the meaning of this great adoring habit of our
humanity, and the wonder of it deepens the longer he ponders it. The instinct
which thus draws men together to prayer is the strange power which has drawn
together the stones of Great Cathedrals, where the mystery of God is embodied.
So far as we know, man is the only being on our planet that pauses to pray, and
the wonder of his worship tells us more about him than any other fact. By some
deep necessity of his nature he is a seeker after God, and in moments of sadness
or longing, in hours of tragedy or terror, he lays aside his tools and looks out
over the far horizon.
The history of the Altar in the life of man is a story more fascinating than
any fiction. Whatever else man may have been - cruel, tyrannous or vindictive -
the record of his long search for God is enough to prove that he is not wholly
base, not altogether an animal. Rites horrible, and often bloody, may have been
part of his early ritual, but if the history of past ages had left us nothing
but the memory of a race at prayer, it would have left us rich. And so,
following the good custom of the men which were of old, we set up an Altar in
the Lodge, lifting up hands in prayer, moved thereto by the ancient need and
aspiration of our humanity. Like the men who walked in the grey years agone, our
need is for the living God to hallow these our days and years, even to the last
ineffable homeward sigh which men call death.
The earliest Altar was a rough, unhewn stone set up, like the stone which
Jacob set up at Bethel when his dream of a ladder on which angels were ascending
and descending, turned his lonely bed into a house of God and a gate of Heaven.
Later, as faith became more refined and the idea of sacrifice grew in meaning,
the Altar was built of hewn stone - cubical in form - cut, carved and often
beautifully wrought, on which men lavished jewels and priceless gifts, deeming
nothing too costly to adorn the place of prayer. Later still, when men erected a
Temple dedicated and adorned as the House of God among men, there were two
Altars, one of sacrifice, and one of incense. The Altar of sacrifice where slain
beasts were offered stood in front of the Temple; the Altar of incense on which
burned the fragrance of worship stood within. Behind all was the far withdrawn
Holy Place into which only the High Priest might enter.
As far back as we can go the Altar was the center of human society, and an
object of peculiar sanctity by virtue of that law of association by which places
and things are consecrated. It was a place of refuge for the hunted or the
tormented - criminals or slaves - and to drag them away from it by violence was
held to be an act of sacrilege, since they were under the protection of God. At
the Altar, marriage rites were solemnized, and treaties made or vows taken in
its presence were more Holy and binding than if made elsewhere, because, there
man invoked God as witness. In all the religions of antiquity, and especially
among peoples who worshipped the light, it was the usage of both Priests and
people to pass around the Altar following the course of the sun - from the East,
by way of the South, to the West - singing hymns of praise as a part of their
worship. Their ritual was thus an allegorical picture of the truth which
underlies all religion - that man must live on earth in harmony with the rhythm
and movement of heaven. From facts and hints such as these we begin to see the
meaning of the Altar in Masonry, and the reason for its position in the Lodge.
In English Lodges, as in the French and the Scottish Rites, it stands in front
of the Master in the East. In the York Rite, so called, it is placed in the
center of the Lodge - more properly a little to the East of the center - about
which all Masonic activities revolve. It is not simply a necessary piece of
furniture, a kind of table intended to support the Holy Bible, the Square and
Compasses. Alike by its existence and its situation it identifies Masonry as a
religious institution, and yet its uses are not exactly the same as the offices
of an Altar in a Cathedral or a Shrine. Here is a fact often overlooked, and we
ought to get it clearly in our minds.
The position of the Altar in the Lodge is not accidental, but is profoundly
significant. For, while Masonry is not a religion, it is religious in its faith
and basic principles, no less than in its spirit and purpose. And yet it is not
a Church. Nor does it attempt to do what the Church is trying to do. If it were
a Church its Altar would be in the East and its Ritual would be altered
accordingly. That is to say, Masonry is not a religion, much less a sect, but a
worship in which all men can unite because it does not undertake to explain, or
dogmatically to settle in detail, those issues by which men are divided. Beyond
the Primary, fundamental facts of faith it does not go. With the philosophy of
those facts, and the differences and disputes growing out of them, it has not to
do. In short, the position of the Altar in the Lodge is a symbol of what Masonry
believes the Altar should be in actual life, a center of division, as is now so
often the case. It does not seek fraternity of spirit, leaving each one free to
fashion his own philosophy of ultimate truth. As we nay read in the
Constitutions of 1723:
"A Mason is obliged, by his Tenure, to obey the moral Law; and if he rightly
understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist, not an irreligious
Libertine. But though in ancient Times Masons were charged in every Country to
be of the Religion of the Country or Nation, whatever it was, yet 'tis now
thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which all Men
agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves; that is, to be good Men
and True, or Men of Honor and Honesty, by whatever denominations or Persuasions
they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the Center of Union, and the
Means of conciliating true Friendship among Persons that must have remained at a
perpetual distance."
Surely those are memorable words, a Magna Charta of friendship and
fraternity. Masonry goes hand in hand with religion until religion enters the
field of sectarian feud, and there it stops; because Masonry seeks to unite men,
not to divide them. Here then, is the meaning of the Masonic Altar and its
position in the Lodge. It is first of all, an Altar of Faith - deep, eternal
Faith which underlies all creeds and over-arches all sects; Faith in God, in the
Moral Law, and in the Life Everlasting. Faith in God is the Cornerstone and the
Keystone of Freemasonry. It is the first truth and the last, the truth that
makes all other truths true, without which life is a riddle and fraternity a
futility. For, apart from God the Father, our dream of the Brotherhood of Man is
as vain as all the vain things proclaimed of Solomon - a Fiction having no basis
or hope in fact.
At the same time, the Altar of Freemasonry is an Altar of Freedom - not
freedom "From" faith, but Freedom Of" faith. Beyond the fact of the reality of
God it does not go, allowing every man to think of God according to his
experience of life and his vision of truth. It does not define God, much less
dogmati-cally determine how and what men shall think or believe about God. There
dispute and division begin. As a matter of fact, Masonry is not speculative at
all, but operative, or rather, co-operative. While all its teaching implies the
Fatherhood of God, yet its ritual does not actually affirm that truth, still
less does it make a test of fellowship. Behind this silence lies a deep and wise
reason. Only by the practice of Brotherhood do men realize the Divine
Fatherhood. As a true-hearted poet has written:
"No man could tell me what my soul might be; I sought for God, and he has
eluded me; I sought my Brother out, and found all three."
Here one fact more, and the meaning of the Masonic Altar will be plain. Often
one enters a great Church, like Westminster Abbey, and finds it empty, or only a
few people in the pews here and there, praying or in deep thought. They are
sitting quietly, each without reference to others, seeking an opportunity for
the soul to be alone, to communicate with mysteries greater than itself, and
find healing for the bruising of life. But no one ever goes to a Masonic Altar
alone. No one bows before it at all except when the Lodge is open and in the
presence of his Brethren. It is an Alter of Fellowship, as it is to teach us
that no man can learn the truth for another, and no man can learn it alone.
Masonry brings men together in mutual respect, sympathy and good will, that we
may learn in love the truth that is hidden by apathy and lost by hate. For the
rest, let us never forget - what has been so often and so sadly forgotten - that
the most sacred Altar on earth is the soul of man - your soul and mine; and that
the Temple and its ritual are not ends in themselves, but a beautiful means to
the end that every human heart may be a sanctuary of faith, a shrine of love,
and Altar of purity, pity, and unconquerable hope.
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