THREE GRAND COLUMNS
All Masons are taught of Wisdom, Strength and Beauty; the words “For
there should be Wisdom to contrive, Strength to support and Beauty to
adorn” are older than our Rituals.
Attempting, as we do, to convey an outline of Masonic wisdom in three
degrees, conferred in three evenings, our work necessarily devotes
but little time to any one of our great teachings. We give the hint,
refer the initiate to the Great Light, abjure to study the Seven
Liberal Arts and Sciences, instruct him to converse with well-
informed Masons, and pass on to offer another outline of a great
truth.
It would take pages, where here are but paragraphs, even to list the
references to Wisdom in the Great Light; the word occurs in the Bible
two hundred and twenty-four times!
For Masons, however, perhaps the most illuminating passage regarding
wisdom is from I Kings (IV. 30-32):
“Solomon’s wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all children of the east
country and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men;
than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman and Chalcol and Darda, the sons of
Mahol; and his fame was in all the nations round about.”
As might be expected of the man who was wiser than “all children of
the East country,” Solomon esteemed wisdom greatly. In Proverbs he
says: “Incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thy heart to
understanding. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that
getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the
merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold. For
wisdom is better than rubies and all things that may be desired are
not to be compared to it!”
It is easy, Masonically, to confuse wisdom with knowledge as it is to
do so in profane life. Pope is often misquoted:
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Drink deep, or taste not
the Pierian spring.”
What he really said was “a little ‘learning’ is a dangerous thing,”
which is as different from knowledge as is wisdom.
Knowledge is the cognizance of facts. Wisdom is the strength of mind
to apply its knowledge. A Mason may know every word of our ritual
from the beginning of the entered Apprentice Degree to the final
words of the Sublime Degree of Master Mason and still have no wisdom,
Masonic or otherwise. Many a great leader of the Craft has been a
stumbling, halting ritualist; yet possessed in abundance a Masonic
wisdom which made him a power for good among the brethren, by whom he
was well beloved.
Knowledge comes from study; Wisdom from experience.
Knowledge may be the possession of the criminal, the wastrel, the
“irreligious libertine” and the atheist. Wisdom comes only to the
wise, and the wise are ever good.
Surely the first of the three Grand Columns which support our
Institution should be taken to heart by every Mason as a symbol of
the real need of a brother to become wise with the goodness of
Masonry, skilled in the arts of brotherhood, learned in the way to
the hearts of his brethren. If he knew not, and asked “how may I
gain Masonic Wisdom,” let him find the answer not in the ritual,
important though it is; not in the form and ceremony, beautiful
though they are, and in themselves strong with the strength of
repetition and age - let him look to the Five Points of Fellowship,
for there is the key to the real wisdom of the brotherhood of man.
The connection between wisdom, strength and beauty is by no means
confined to Masonry. The terms have been associated in many great
and good minds. Thus, Tupper sings:
“Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter
To what shall their rarity be likened, what price shall count
their worth?
Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches,
No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty.”
Milton wrote:
“What is strength, without a double share of wisdom?
Vast, unwieldy, burdensome;
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties;
not made to rule But to subserve, where wisdom bears command.”
And the immortal Bard of Avon knew:
“O, how much doth beauty beauteous seem
by that sweet adornment which truth doth give!”
Strength, the second of our Grand Columns, without which nothing
endures, not even when contrived by wisdom and adorned with beauty;
we know in two forms in our daily lives. First, the strength which
lies in action, power, might - the strength of the arm, the engine,
the army. Second, that other, subtler strength which is not less
strong for being passive; the strength of the column which supports,
the strength of the foundation which endures; the strength of the
principles by which we live, individually, collectively, nationally -
Masonically.
It is the second form of strength with which the Speculative Mason is
concerned. Freemasons build no temporal building. True, we do lay
the cornerstone of the public building in the northeast corner, but
the building is symbolic, not practical. The operative Mason who
sets the stone for the Grand Master would place it as strongly in the
building without our ceremony as with it. Our building is with the
strength which endures in hearts and minds rather than that which
makes the sun-dry materials of which an edifice is composed to do
man’s will. The Freemason constructs only the spiritual building;
his stone is his mind; mentally, not physically, chipped by the
common gavel to a perfect ashlar. The strength by which he
establishes his kingdom is not a strength of iron but a strength of
will; his pillars support not a wall to keep out the cowans and
eavesdroppers, but a character, proof against the intrusion of the
vices and superfluities of life.
The lesson of the second column is made plain in the second degree.
The “promise of God unto David” may be found by any who will read in
II Samuel”
“And when thy days shall be fulfilled and thou shalt sleep with thy
fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee which shall proceed out of
thy bowels and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house
in my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
He who reads not merely the promise, but the reason for it, will
understand that when David wished to build a house for the Lord, the
Prophet Nathan brought him a message of the Lord, that he, not David,
will build a “house not made with hands” in the form of sons and
their sons forever. Later, in the Great Light, we learn that the
house which is “the Temple of the Holy Spirit” is man. If we follow
out Masonic teachings, and believe that “the inestimable gift of God
to man for the rule and guide of his faith” holds a true
interpretation of the Mason’s conception of life and living, the
“strength” which Masons should strive to acquire is that which will
establish our sovereignty over ourselves, that our kingdom of
character may endure.
Beauty is represented in a Masonic lodge by the Corinthian Column,
most beautiful of the ancient orders of architecture; by the Junior
Warden, who observes the sun at Meridian when the day is most
beautiful; by Hiram Abif, who “beautified and adorned the Temple.”
We are taught that it is as necessary that beauty adorn all great and
important undertakings as that wisdom contrives and strength supports
them. In the story of Solomon’s Temple in the Great Light we find
detailed descriptions of what was evidently, to those who went into
details of its construction; the most beautiful building possible for
the engineering skill, the wealth and the conception of the people of
Israel of that day.
Artists have disputed and philosophers have differed about what is
beauty. All of us have our individual conceptions of what constitutes
it. That the beauty is largely in the mind of the beholder is
demonstrated vividly to every traveler! The Turk thinks Ruben’s
women are beautiful; while the American admires the pulchritude of
the slender woman. Doubtless the pyramids were beautiful to the
Egyptians, but modern architecture finds them too plain, too severe
for beauty. Harmonies which the trained musical ear enjoys are but
sounding brass and tinkling cymbal to the radio devotee, who finds in
the spontaneity of a Negro jazz orchestra something to which his
conception of musical beauty responds to. The man who finds pleasure
in Edgar Guest gets none from Swinburne, or the sonnets to the
Portuguese; he who finds beauty in a diatom or a bacteria under a
microscope will see none in tiger or a rose.
Obviously then, the beauty of which Masons are taught is that variety
which, like the “natural religion” of the Old Charges, is one “in
which all men agree.”
As no two men are agreed as to what is beautiful in a material sense,
the Masonic conception of beauty cannot be of a material beauty. Its
symbol of beauty - the sun at Meridian - is actually blinding to see.
If we think the sun is beautiful, it is, for what it does for us
rather than for what it is.
The Masonic Pillar of Beauty then, must be the symbol of an inward
loveliness; a beauty of the mind, of the heart; a beauty of idea and
ideal; a beauty of the spirit. Our Corinthian Column is to us not
merely the support of the building, but that which upholds a
character. Our Junior Warden represents not only the beauty of the
sun at Meridian, but the illumination by which a life is made
beautiful. Hiram Abif is to us not only an exemplary character but
an ideal to follow, a tradition to be preserved, a glory for which we
may strive.
All about us, among our neighbors, are examples of what we term “a
beautiful life.” Such beauty is almost wholly composed of
unselfishness. He who walks in beauty thinks of others before
himself, of stretching forth his hand, not for personal gain, but to
help, aid and assist the poor and the unfortunate. Such a conception
of the third Grand Column is foreshadowed in our teaching that “the
greatest of these is charity” - charity of thought, of action, of
understanding as well as of alms and of giving.
Masonic beauty was wholly an operative matters in the days when the
Gothic Cathedrals first lifted their arches and spires to heaven.
Today, when Masonry is purely speculative, Masonic beauty must be
considered only as a beauty of the spirit.
It cannot be had by wishing. It is not painted by the brush of
desire. No musician may compose it upon any material piano. The
poet may write about it, but he cannot phrase it. For it is of the
inward essence which marks the difference between the “real good
man” and he who only outwardly conforms to the laws and customs of
society.
A man may keep every law, go to church three times on Sunday, belong
to our Order and subscribe to every charity; and still be mean of
spirit, unhappy to live with, selfish, inconsiderate, and
disagreeable. Such a one has not learned the inward meaning of the
Pillar of Beauty. He has never stood, symbolically in the South.
For him, the sun at Meridian is but the orb of the day at high noon
and nothing more.
But for the real Mason, the brother who takes the lessons of the
three Grand Columns to heart, Beauty is as much a lamp to live by as
are Wisdom and Strength. He finds beauty in his fellow-man because
his inner self is beautiful. His “house not made with hands” is
glorious before heaven, not because, in imitation of Solomon, he
“overlaid also the house, the beams, the post and the walls thereof
and doors thereof with gold” but because it is made of those stones
which endureth before the Great Architect - unselfishness, and
kindness, and consideration, and charity, and a giving spirit - in
other words, of brotherhood genuine because it springs from the
heart.
For these things endure. Material things pass away.
The Temple of Solomon is but a memory. Scattered are the stones,
stolen is the gold and silver, destroyed are the lovely vessels cast
by Hiram Abif. But the memory. like the history of the beauty and
the glory which was Solomon, abide into this day. So shall it be
with our “house not built with hands,” so be it if we build with the
Beauty which Masons teach.
In conclusion consider an oddity of this dear old Craft of ours, a
coincidence to be cherished in the heart, if only to keep constantly
in memory of the real meaning of the three Grand Columns.
The ancient Hebrew word for strength is “Daath.”
The ancient Hebrew word for strength is “Oz.”
The ancient Hebrew word for a hewn stone, our perfect Ashlar, which
may well stand here as meaning beauty, is “Gazith.”
According to our ideas, Hebrew is read backwards.
The initials of these three Old Testament words, read backwards,
produce our name for Deity!
Surely it is the Great Architect, of whom they speak to the Mason who
hath ears to hear, to whom we must look for the inner and spiritual
meaning of the three Grand Columns which support our Institution!
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