SWADDLING CLOTHES
You are taught that, as an Entered Apprentice, you are passing through the
period of early Masonic youth. As a Fellowcraft, should you attain that higher
estate, you will learn your condition then, is emblematic of manhood; while as a
Master Mason, if it is your happy fortune ever to be raised to the Light, you
will learn that true Freemasonry makes a man sure of a well spent life, and
gives him assurance of a glorious immortality.
When newly born into the world, a human baby is the most helpless of all
animals. His first tender years are wholly a time of learning; learning to eat,
learning to manage his members, learning to walk, learning to make himself
understood, learning to understand. The period you, as an Entered Apprentice,
must spend before you can receive the degree of Fellowcraft corresponds to these
early years of childhood; you must learn to manage your Masonic Members, you
must learn to understand Masonic language and to make yourself understood in it.
The Entered Apprentice is more like a child in an institution than like one
in a home. In the home the child has the undivided attention of his parents; in
the institution he has, necessarily, only the divided attention of those who
must mother and father many children, and the help he individually receives is
less as the number who claim it is greater. The lodge is an institution; as an
Entered Apprentice you will receive careful instruction in the necessary arts of
Masonry, in so far as you are prepared to receive them, but, obviously, there
can be no coddling, no tender individual attentions to you which are not also
given to all other Entered Apprentices of your lodge.
One child stands out above another in its development in an institution
because of its inherent brightness, and because of its willingness to study and
to learn. As an Entered Apprentice Mason you will stand out above your fellows
as you pay strict attention to those brethren who are your instructors, and as
you are willing to study and learn. For your monitors, my brother, no matter how
great their erudition, and how large their charity and willingness to serve you,
can only point for you the path, and give you those elementary instructions in
Masonry which are the minimum with which you can walk onward.
Your feet have been set upon a path. In your hands has been thrust the staff
of ritual, the bread of knowledge and the water of prayer. With these alone you
can proceed up the path until you come to the wall marked "Fellowcraft," and the
straight gate through which you can pass only if you have digested the bread,
drunk the water and still have your staff. But you can climb quicker, see more
of the beauties by the way, and arrive with greater strength for the next
highway upon which you will travel, if you are not content with the least which
you if you may take as aids, but demand a greater equipment.
There are books, my brother; many, many books. First, there is what is known
as the Monitor of your jurisdiction; a small book which contains all of the
ritual of all of the degrees, which may be printed. A careful study of it will
recall to your mind much that you heard while receiving your first degree, and
suggests many questions to your mind; questions which any thinking candidate
must ask, and queries which, answered, will make him a better Entered
Apprentice. The answers to many of these questions you will find in many good
books on Freemasonry.
Any Entered Apprentice who will read and ponder a good volume which deals
with the first degree of Freemasonry, will approach the West Gate for his
Fellowcraft degree in a more humble attitude and a more confident heart than he
who is satisfied merely with his staff, his bread and his water.
For consider, my brother; Freemasonry is old, very old. No man knoweth just
how old, but deep students of the art have gathered unimpeachable evidence;
evidence of the character which would be convincing in a court of law, that the
principles which underlie Freemasonry and which are taught in its symbolism, go
back beyond the dawn of written history. Freemasonry's symbols are found
wherever the physical evidences of ancient civilizations are unearth. Secret
orders of all ages, all climes, all peoples, have, independently of each other,
sought the Great Truths along the same paths, and concealed what they found in
much the same symbols. Freemasonry is the repository of the learning of the
ages, a storehouse of the truths of life and death, religion and immortality;
aye, even of the truths we know regarding the Great Architect of the Universe,
which have been painfully won, word by word and line by line, from the books of
nature and of the inquiring mind, by literally thousands of generations of men.
No man has mind big enough, quick enough, open enough to absorb and
understand in an evening even the introduction to what Freemasonry knows; not in
a month of evenings! No degree, no matter how impressively performed, can
possibly take him far along this road. All that the Entered Apprentice degree
can do is to point the way, and give you the sustenance by which you may travel.
You may travel with your ears closed, and your eyes upon the ground. You will
arrive, physically, even as a traveller with bandaged eyes may arrive after a
toilsome journey. But to travel thus is not to learn. And the Freemason who does
not learn, what sort of Freemason is he? Pin wearer, only; denying himself the
greatest opportunity given to man to make of himself truly one of the greatest
brotherhood the world has ever known.
Therefore, my brother entered Apprentice, use the month or more which is
given you between this and the Fellowcraft Degree, not only to receive your
monitorial instruction and learn, letter perfect, the ritual in which much more
is hidden than is revealed, but also to investigate for yourself; to read for
your- self; to learn, for yourself, the meaning of some of our symbols and how
they came to be.
You will find Masons who will say to you that all of Masonry which any man
needs to know is found in the degrees. So will you find those who say to you
that all any man needs to know of God or religion is found in the Great Light
which rests upon our Holy Altar. But be not discouraged by these, my brother,
nor put your faith in the vision of any Mason; the only eyes with which you may
truly see are your own; the only faith which is truly valuable to any man, is
his own. Reason it out for yourself; every man needs an education in Holy Writ,
to expound for him the hidden truths which are in the Great Light, therefore you
require some writer or student to expound for you the hidden truths which are in
Masonry's Ritual and Symbols. But a legion of devoted men of God have spent
thousands of years digging in the Book of Books, and always have they discovered
some new gold. With no irreverence, nor any comparison of the fundamentals of
Freemasonry with the Bible, it can be said that generations of men have sought
in the mountain which is Freemasonry for the gold which is Truth of God, and
found it; and that without such patient and delving, the gold could not be seen.
Do you then, dig for yourself, but dig by the light of the lamps lit by those
who have gone this way before you.
This United States of ours has its ritual; its Declaration of Independence,
its Constitution, its Bill of Rights. Doubtless you have read all of these;
perhaps in school, you memorized them, as now you must memorize Masonic ritual.
But you would not contend that the mere learning by heart of the Declaration of
Independence or the Constitution ever made any man an authority upon them, nor
that the foreigner investigating our institutions for the first time could
become a good American merely by such memorization. We require the highest
tribunal in all the world, the supreme Court, to interpret to us our own
Constitution, and not yet have any of our legislators come to the end of the
meanings of those liberties for which we declared when this country first lifted
up its head among the nations of the world, and cried the birth cry.
As an Entered Apprentice you are barely born, Masonically. You must learn, my
brother, and learn well, if you are to enter into our heritage. That which is
worth living, in this world, is worth working for; indeed, as you know from your
experience in life, anything which you must not work for, turns soon to ashes in
your mouth. Without labor, there can be no rest; without work there can be no
vacation; without pain, there can be no pleasure; without sorrow, there is no
joy. And equally true it is, that while men do receive the degrees of Masonry at
the hands of their brethren, there is no Freemasonry in a man's heart if he has
not been willing to sacrifice some time, give some effort, some study, ask some
questions. digest some philosophy, to make it truly his own.
A certain ceremony through which you recently passed not only has the
immediate and obvious significance of charity to the deserving; a man may be
divested of all wealth to teach him something else than the giving of alms and
the succoring of the distressed. If you will suppose yourself marooned upon a
desert island, the only man upon land shut in by the sea, you will readily
recognize that all the wealth of the Indies might be of less real value to you
than a box of matches, a cup of water, a tool of iron. The richest man in the
world could gain nothing with his gold if he were forced to live at the poles of
the earth. Money is only of value where material things may be obtained by
bartering labor. A man may be moneyless and still wealthy, as you might be upon
your desert island if you had tools, nails, and materials with which to build
yourself a boat in order to make your escape.
So this ceremony, which you have already been taught, was not performed to
trifle with your feeling, should make not only a deep and lasting impression on
your mind as to charity and giving aid, but should serve to point out to you
that Freemasonry's deepest and truest treasures are those of the mind and heart;
not to be bought, not to be received as a free gift, not to be found, not to be
obtained by you in any way whatsoever except by patient search, and willing,
happy labor.
Read, my brother; read symbolism and read a history of Freemasonry; read the
Old Charges; read your Monitor. Read, study, and digest; make you own sum of a
store of knowledge which is Freemasonry's; make of yourself an Entered
Apprentice in the hidden as well as the literal sense of the word.
You are called an "Entered Apprentice" when there has been performed over you
and with you, a certain ceremony, but you cannot in reality be "entered" unless
you are willing to enter.
There is homely truth in many an old saying. The horse who is led to water
will only drink if he is thirsty; no man can make him swallow if he will not.
Freemasonry, which has conferred upon you the distinction of its First Degree,
has brought you through a green pasture and made you to lie down beside a still
water of its truth. But there lives not the Grand Master of any Jurisdiction,
all powerful in Freemasonry though he is, who can make you drink of those
waters; there lives not the man, be he King, Prince or Potentate with no matter
what temporal power or what strength of Army or of Wealth, who can force you
through the door your brethren have swung wide at your approach.
The pathway is before you. The staff, the bread and the water are in your
hand. Whether you will travel blindly and in want, or eagerly and with joy
depends only and wholly upon you. And very largely upon what you now do, how
soon you emerge from your swaddling clothes and how well you learn will depend
the epitaph some day to be written of your memory on the hearts of your fellow
lodge members; it is for you to decide whether they will say of you: "Just
another lodge member," or "A True Freemason, a Faithful Son of Light."
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