En: MACKEY - S

MACKEY – S

Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry

• S

The Hebrew letter is Samech. The nineteenth letter in the English alphabet. Its nulnerical value is 60. The sacred application to the Deity is in the name Somech,Upholder, the Latin Fulcteus or Firmas. The Hebrew letter Shin, a tooth, from its formation, is of the numerical value of 300.

• SAADH

One of a certain Indian sect, who have emigrated Christianity, and who in some remeets resemble the Quakers in their doctrine and mode of life. Sometimes written Saud.

• SABAISM

The worship of the sun, moon, and stars, the Tsaba Hashmaim, meaning the host of heaven. It was practised in Persia, Chaldea, India, and other Oriental Countries, at an early period a of the world's history (see Blazing Star and Sunworship).

• SABAOTH

The Hebrew words pronounced Jehovah Tsabaoth, and meaning Jehovah of Costs, a very usual appellation for the Most High in the prophetical books, especially in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Malachi, but not found in the Pentateuch.

• SABBAL

Hebrew word, meaning the Burden, the Latin Onus. The name of the sixth step of the mystic ladder of Kadosh of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Sometimes spelled Sabael.

• SABBATH

In the lecture of the Second or Fellow Craft's Degree, it is said, In six days God created the heavens and the earth, and rested upon the seventh day; the seventh, therefore, our ancient Brethren consecrated as a day of rest from their labors, thereby enjoving frequent opportunities to contemplate the glorious works of creation, and to adore their great Creator.

• SABIANISM

See Sabaism

• SACELLUM

A availed enclosure without roof. An ornamental chapel within a church.

• SACKCLOTH

In the Rose Croix instructions, sackcloth is a symbol of grief and humiliation for the loss of that which it is the object of the Degree to recover.

• SACRED ASYLUM OF HIGH MASONRY

In the Institutes, Statutes, and Regulations, signed by Adillgton, Chancellor, Which are given in the Rectueil des Actes du Supréme Consetél du France, or Collection of the Acts of the Supreme Council of France, as a Sequence to the Constitutions of 1762, this title is given to any subordinate Body of the Scottish Rite. Thus in Article XVI: "At the time of the installation of a Sacred Asylum of High Masonry, the members composing it shall all make and sign their pledge of obedience to the Institutes, Statutes, and General Regulations of High Masonry." In this document the Rite is always called High Masonry, and any Body, whether a Lodge of Perfection, a Chapter of Rose Croix, or a Council of Kàdosh, is styled a Sacred Asylum.

• SACRED LAW

The first Tables of Stone, or Commandments, which were delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai, are referred to in £, preface to the Mashna, bearing this tradition: God not only delivered the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, but the explanation of it likewise. When Moses came down from the Mount and entered into his tent. Aaron went to visit him, and Moses acquainted Aaron with the Laws he had received from God,together with the explanation of them. After this Aaron placed himself on the right hand of Moses, and Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron, were admitted, to whom Moses repeated what he had just before told to Aaron.

These being seated, the one on the right hand, the other on the left hand of Moses, the seventy elders of Israel, who compose the Sanhedrim, came in, and Moses again declared the same laws to them, as he had done before to Aaron and his sons. Lastly, all who pleased of the comnlon people were invited to enter, and Moses instructed them likewise in the same manner as the rest. So that Aaron heard four times w hat Moses had been taught by God upon Mount Sinai, Eleazar and Ithamar three times, the seventv elders twice, and the people once. Moses afterward reduced the laws which he had received into writing, hut not the explanation of them. These he thought it sufficient to trust to the memories of the above-mentioned persons, who, being perfectly instructed in them, delivered them to their children, and these again to theirs, from age to age.

The Sacred Law is repeated in the instructions of the Fourteenth Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SACRED LODGE

In the lectures according to the English system, we find the following definition of the Sacred Lodge, the symbol has not been preserved in the American instructions: Over the Sacred Lodge presided Solomon, the greatest of kings, and the wisest of men; Hiram, the great and learned King of Tyre; and Hiram Abif, the widow's son, of the tribe of Naphtali. It was held in the bowels of the sacred Mount Moriah, under the part whereon was erected the Holy of Holies. On this mount it was where Abraham confirmed his faith by his readiness to offer up his only son, Isaae. Here it was where David offered that acceptable sacrifice on the threshing-floor of Araunah by which the anger of the Lord was appeased, and the plague stayed from his people. Here it was where the Lord delivered to David, in a dream, the plan of the glorious Temple, afterward erected by our noble Grand Master, King Solomon. And lastly, here it was where he declared he would establish his sacred name and word, which should never pass away- and for these reasons this was justly styled the Sacred Lodge.

• SACRIFICANT

Tile French is Sacrifant. A Degree in the Archives of the Lodge of Saint Louis des Amis Réunis (Saint Louis of the Reunited Friends) at Calais.

• SACRIFICE, ALTAR OF

See Altar

• SACRIFICER

In French, the word is Sacrificateur.

1. A Degree in the Archives of the Lodge of Saint Louis des Amis Réunis (Saint Louis of the Reunited Friends) at Calais.

2. A Degree in the collection of Pyron.

• SADDA

Persian Saddar, meaning the hundred gates. A work in the Persian tongue, being a summary of the Avesta, or sacred books.

• SADDUCEES

Sometimes Zedukim. A Sect called from its founder Sadoc, or Zadok (see Secund Samuel viii, 17, xv, 24; First Kings i, 34), who lived about 250 B.C. They denied the resurrection, a future state, and the existence of angels. The Sadducees are often mentioned in the New Testament, the Talmud, and the Midrash. The tenets of the Sadducees are noticed as contrasted with those of the Pharisees. While Jesus condemned the Sadducees and Pharisees, he is nowhere found criticizing the gets, words, or doctrines of the third sect of the Jews, the Essenes; wherefore, it has been strongly favored that Jesus was himself one of the last-named sect, who in many excellent qualities resembled Freemasons. The Sadducees were the most conservative of forces, the Pharisees more advanced in the later thoughts and tendencies. The Gospels throw an interesting and significant light upon these circumstances and their effects in that era.

• SADLER, HENRY

Born 1840, died 1911. One of the most painstaking, patient, and persevering of Masonic students. He was initiated in 1862 in the Lodge of Justice No. 147, being at the time an A. B. in the Mereantile Marine. He became W. M. of this Lodge in 1872. In 1882 he was a founder of the Southgate Lodge, No. 1950, and in 1886 he was a founder and first Master of the Walsingham Lodge, No. 2148; in 1869 he was exalted to the Royal Arch Degree in the Royal York Chapter, No. 7; in 1872 he joined the Temperance Chapter, No. 169, and became its First Principal in 1880. In 1879 he was appointed Grand Tiler of the Grand Lodge of England, and held the post until 1910, when he retired on a pension. In 1887 he was appointed Sub-Librarian to the Grand dodge of England and was promoted to be its Librarian in 1910. His position in the Grand Lodge Library gave him access to all the old records of the Grand Lodge of England, and enabled him to write most valuable books on various points in connection with the history of English Freemasonry.

In 1887 appeared his principal work, Masonic Facts and Fictions, in which he claimed, and his argument was generally accepted, that the Grand Lodge of the Antients was formed in London by some Irish Freemasons, who had not seceded, as had been supposed from the Regular Grand Lodge. In 1589 he published Notes on tile Ceremonny of Installation; in 1891, the Life of Thomas Dunckerley; on 1898, Masonic Reprints and Historical Revelations; in 1904, Some Memorials of the Globe Lodge, No. BS, also the Illustrated lIistory of Emulation Lodge of 11nprovement, No. 256; and in 1906, the Histor1y and Records of the Lodge of Emulation, No. 21.

• SAGITTA

The keystone of an arch. The abscissa of a curve.

• SAILORS, AND FREEMASONRY

Much of the United States and Canada as well as Britain has been for a long time at sea. It is not difficult for Englishmen to think of themselves as a people partly afloat, nor the Norwegians, and still less the Japanese; but America also is partly afloat, and ever has been, though it is hard for Americans to believe it. The Navy itself has more duties in peacetime than in war, and of equal importance, for it is our government abroad, without which consuls, ministers, ambassadors and diplomats in general would carry little weight. Wherever the Navy goes, America goes. The Navy, moreover, is one of America's proudest achievements, if Americans knew it, and has given to the land it serves a long succession of dedicated men whose intellectual, literary, and scholarly achievements stand second only after the colleges and universities. As for Britain, its fleet has been its alter ego. Freemasonry also, ever since as a world-wide Speculative Fraternity it escaped out of the cocoon of the Time Immemorial Lodges, has been afloat on the merchant ships and with the navies, and has with its Lodges followed them, or has waited for them in more than 3 thousand ports.

Moreover the sea is one of the oldest of callings, millennia older than Homer who celebrated it, for the first ships appeared at the same time as the first houses and the most ancient cities. Also, like the arts and crafts on land, they have from a long time ago had their own gilds and fraternities; the Greek mariners, who went everywhere, had their associations. the Roman sailors had their collegia, and for many centuries both of them had mithraea to visit on shore. After the gild system arose early in Medieval times seamen had gilds of their own; they took apprentices; had a Patron Saint; had part in pageants with a float depicting Noah; and from the beginning of the theater were favorite stage characters.

If ever a truly complete history of Freemasonry is written, omitting nothing important enough to have a chapter of its own, it will tell the story of how seamen of Britain, America, and the maritime countries of Europe carried Masonry around the world; so that if they had no share in its antiquity they had a large share in that other Landmark, its universality. (For Mariners in the period of the gilds and pageants see The British Tar in Fact and Fiction, by Charles Napier Robinson; Harper & Bros.; London and New York; 1911. The first novel about the sea was written by an American, James Fenimore Cooper; also, it is believed by many; its greatest, Moby Dtck, by Herman Melville; Shakespeare's last play was "The Tempest," a poemcomedy-drama of the sea, with a setting off our own Atlantic coast; and the fact is a reminder of the "Odyssey," attributed to Homer, the greatest sea yarn ever written. See also NAVAL LODGES in this Supplement.)

• SAINT ADHABELL

Introduced into the Cooke Manuscript (line 603), where the allusion evidently is to Saint Amphibalus, which see.

• SAINT ALBAN

Saint Alban, or Albanus, the proto-martyr of England, was born in the third century, at Verulam, now St. Albans, in Hertfordshire.

In his youth he visited Rome, and served seven years as a soldier under the Emperor Diocletian. On his return to Britain he embraced Christianity, and was the first who suffered martyrdom in the great persecution which raged during the reign of that emperor.

The Freemasons of England have claimed Saint Alban as being intimately connected with the early history of the Fraternity in that island. Anderson (Constitutions, 1738, page 57) says, "This is asserted by all the old copies of the Constitutions, and the old English Masons firmly believed it," and he quotes from the Old Constitutions:

Saint Alban loved Masons well and cherished them much, and he made their pay right good; viz., two shillings per week and three pence to their cheer; whereas before that time, through all the land, a Mason had but a penny a day and his meat, until Saint Alban amended it. Ho also obtained of the King a Charter for the Free Masons, for to hold a general council, and gave it the name of Assembly, and was thereat himself as Grand Master and helped to make Masons and gave them good charges.

We have another tradition on the same Subject; for in a little work published about 1764, at London, under the title of The Complete Free Mason or Multa Paucis for the Lovers of Secrets, we find the following statement (page 47) in reference to the Masonic character and position of plaint Alban. In the following (the third) century, Gordian sent many architects over—into England—who constituted themselves into Lodges, and instructed the Craftsmen in the true principles of Freemasonry; and a few years later, Carausius was made emperor of the British Isles and being a great lover of art and science, appointed Albanus Grand Master of Masons, who employed the Fraternity in building the palace of Verulam, or St. Albans.

Both of these statements are simply legends, or traditions of the not unusual character, in which historical facts are destroyed by legendary additions. The fact that Saint Alban lived at Verulam may be true—most probably is so. It is another fact that a splendid Episcopal palace was built there, whether in the time of Saint Alban or not is not so certain; but the affirmative has been assumed; and hence it easily followed that, if built in his time, he must have superintended the building of the edifice.. He would, of course, employ the workmen, give them his patronage, and, to some extent, by his superior abilities, direct their labors. Nothing was easier, then, than to make him, after all this, a Grand Master. The assumption that Saint Alban built the palace at Verulam was very natural, because when the true builder's name grass lost—supposing it to have been so—Saint Alban was there ready to take his place, Verulam having been his birthplace.

The increase of pay for labor and the annual congregation of the Freemasons in a General Assembly, having been subsequent events, the exact date of whose first occurrence has been lost, by a process common in the development of traditions, they were readily transferred to the same era as the building of the palace at Verulam. It is not even necessary to suppose, by way of explanation, as Preston does, that Saint Alban was a celebrated architect, and a real encourager of able workmen.

The whole of the tradition is worked out of these simple facts: that architecture began to be encouraged in England about the third century; that Saint Alban lived at that time at Verulam; that a palace was erected then, or at some subsequent period, in the same place; and in the lapse time, Verulam, Saint Alban, and the Freemasons became mingled together in one tradition. The inquiring student of history will neither assert nor deny net Saint Alban built the palace of Verulam. He will be content with taking him as the representative that builder, if he was not the builder himself; and will thus recognize the proto-martyr as the type of Chat is supposed to have been the Freemasonry of his age, or, perhaps, only of the age in which the tradition received its form.

• ST. ALBANS, EARL OF

Anderson (Constitutions, 1738, page 101) says, and, after him, Preston, that a General Assembly of the Craft was held on December 27, 1663, by Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, Grand Master, who appointed Sir John Denham his Deputy, and Sir Christopher Wren and Tohn Webb his Wardens. Several useful regulations were made at this Assembly, known as the Regulations of 1663. These regulations are given by Anderson and by Preston, and also in the Roberts Manuscript, with the addition of the oath of secrecy. The Roberts Manuscript says that the Assembly was held on the 8th of December.

• SAINT ALBAN'S REGULATIONS

The regulations said to have been made by Saint Alban tor the government of the Craft are referred to by Doctor Anderson, in his second edition (page 57), and afterward by Brother Preston (see Saint Asian).

• SAINT AMPHIBALUS

The ecclesiastical legend is that Saint Amphibalus came to England and converted Saint Alban, who was the great patron of Freemasonry. The Old Constitutions do not speak of him, except the Cooke Manuscript, which has the following passage (line 602): "And soon after that came Seynt Adhabell into England, and he converted Seynt Albon to Christendom"; where, evidently, Saint Adhabell is meant for Saint Amphibalus. But amphibalus is the Latin name of a cloak worn by Priests over their other garments; and Godfrey Higgins (Celtic Druids, page 201) has argued that there was no such saint, but that the Sanctus Amphibalus was merely the holy cloak brought by Saint Augustine to England. His connection with the history of the origin of Freemasonry in England is, therefore, accepting the reasoning of Godfrey Higgins, altogether apocryphal.

• SAINT ANDREW

Brother of Saint Peter and one of the twelve Apostles. He is held in high reverence by the Scotch, Swedes, and Russians. Tradition says he was crucified on a cross shaped thus, X. Orders of knighthood have been established in his name (see Knight of Saint Andrew).

• SAINT ANDREW, KNIGHT OF

See Knight of Saint Andrew

• SAINT ANDREW'S DAY

November 30, was adopted by the Grand Lodge of Scotland as the day of its Annual Communication.

• SAINT ANTHONY

An Order taking its rise from the life and habits of Saint Anthony, the hermit, who died about 357. His disciples, called Anchorites, near Ethiopia, lived in austerity and solitariness in the desert, until John, Emperor of Ethiopia, in 370, created them a religious order of knighthood, and bestowed privileges upon them under the title of Saint Anthony, who was made patron of the empire. They established monasteries, adopted a black habit, and wore a blue cross in the shape of a Tau. The vow of the Order embraced chastity, defense of the Christian faith, to guard the empire, obey their superiors, and go to war when and wheresoever commanded. Marriage required a license. There were two classes—combatants and non-combatants— the second class being composed of those too old for military duty. yet ere they retired they were required to serve three years against Arabian pirates, three against the Turks, and three against the Moors.

The ancient monastery is in the deserts of Thebais, surrounded by an oval wall five hundred paces in circumference and forty feet in height. It is entered by ropes let down from the watch-house, the crane being turned by monks. By age, the cells, which are four by five by seven feet, have been reduced from three hundred to forty. Advantage had been taken of one of nature's curiosities in obtaining abundant water from a riven rock, which is reached through a subterraneous passage of fifty paces, extending beyond the walls. In France, Italy, and Spain there are ecclesiastical and military organizations styled Knights of Saint Anthony, who wear a plain cross, the principals a double cross. The chief seat is at Vienna. In the Abbey rest the remains of Saint Anthony.

• SAINT AUGUSTlNE

Saint Augustine, or Saint Austin, was sent with forty monks into England, about the end of the sixth century, to evangelize the country Leaning says that, according to a tradition, he placed himself at the head of the Corporations of Builders, and was recognized as their Grand Master. No such tradition, nor, indeed, even the name of Saint Augustine, is to be found in any of the 01s1 Constitutions which contain the Legend of the Craft.

• SAINT BERNARD

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was one of the most eminent names of the Church in the Middle Ages. In 1128 he was present at the Council of Troyes, where, through his influence, the Order of Knights Templar was confirmed; and he himself is said to have composed the Rule or Constitution by which they were afterward governed. Throughout his life he was distinguished for his warm attachment to the Templars, and "rarely," says Burnes (Sketch of the Knights Templar, page 12), "wrote a letter to the Holy Land, in which he did not praise them, and recommend them to the favor and protection of the great." To his influence, untiringly exerted in their behalf, has always been attributed the rapid increase of the Order in wealth and popularity.

• ST. CLAIR OF ROSSLYN

One of the most curious episodes in the history of Freemasonry occurred at the time of the founding of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1736 when William St. Clair of Rosslyn (or Rossline, or Roslin) tendered his "resignation of the office of hereditary Grand Master" in order that in the future no confusions would arise as between his family and any Grand Master. The "resignation" begins by saying "that the Masons in Scotland did, by several deeds, constitute and appoint William and Sir William St. Clair of Rossline, my ancestors and their heirs, to be their patrons, protectors, judges, or masters," etc. (See page 899.)

Historians have doubted that any family ever held a suzerainty over the Craft in Scotland. Yet it is not impossible that it should have been true, for similar things occurred elsewhere. During the later Middle Ages and early in the Modern Age, it was not uncommon for a family to organize itself (as Japanese families still do), with a head, ruless and penalties, somewhat like a modern business corporation. Until about the Sixteenth Century France, at least lid its government, army, and church, was little more than a network of such families —the "200 families" still claim ancient and hereditary privileges. The most extraordinary of such families in any country was the Hapsburgs (or Habsburgs) which as early as 1291 became a kind of hansa, or gild, and went into the business of supplying (by contract or agreement) kings, queens, princes, etc., to any country in the market for one, and are still at it. The Fuggers were another, except that they were financiers.

One of these families, the most notorious, has a link with the history of Freemasonry through a link it itself had with the gild system in Florence, Italy. This was the Medici Family (it began as Medici and Sons). The founder of the family was a worker in a gild of weavers and carders in the Fourteenth Century, and became a petty but successful gild politician. Gradually, decade after deeade, one Medici after another became "boss" of a gild, then of a number of gilds, got a monopoly of the silk gild, became wealthy and established a bank, and by a deft manipulation of gild funds and politics became ruler of Florence.

Once in power they produced a line of Popes, beginning with the famous Leo X; they produced the noted Cosimo, the famous Lorenzo, patron of the arts, and finally sent a weakling daughter of the house, Katherine, to be Queen of France, where she helped defeat the Protestant Reformation. The Medici history brought to light a fundamental weakness of the gild system; workers' gilds could by manipulation be brought under control by merchant gilds; a group of these latter could be brought under control by one of their own gilds; one man, with money enough, could control that gild. A gild had in its own organization no means to fight off that form of monopolization. Once the Medici had learned how it could be done, the capitalist system was invented, and the gild system was doomed; the emphasis passed from work and things to be made to money and wealth to be gained.

The St. Clair family made no such use of the Mason gilds in Scotland; but a case like that of the Medici, and the history of organized families in general, makes the St. Clair tradition more intelligible, and at the same time more credible; they may even have found it an economic advantage to be "judges and masters" of the Masons.

• SAINT CLAIR CHARTERS

In the Advocates' Library, of Edinburgh, is a manuscript entitled Hay's Memoirs, which is, says Lawrie, "a collection of several things relating to the historical account of the most famed families of Scotland. Done by Richard Augustine Hay, Canon Regular of Sainte Genevefs of Paris, Prior of Sainte Pierremont, etc., Anno Domini 1700." Among this collection are two manuscripts, supposed to have been copied from the originals by Canon Hay, and which are known to Masonic scholars as the Saint Clair Charters. These copies, which it seems were alone known in the eighteenth century, were first published by Lawrie, in his History of Freemasonry, where they constitute Appendices I and II. But it appears that the originals have since been discovered, and they have been printed by Brother W. J. Hughan, in his Unpublished Records of the Craft, with the following introductory account of them by Brother D. Murray Lyon: These manuscripts were several years ago accidentally discovered by David Lang, Esq., of the Signet Library, who gave them to the late Brother Aytoun Professor of Belles-Lettres in the University of Edinburgh, in exchange for some antique documents he had. The Professor presented them to the Grand Lodge of Scotland, in whose repositories they now are. There can be no doubt of their identity as originals. We have compared several of the signatures with autographs in other manuscripts of the time.

The Charters are in scrolls of paper— the one 15 by 1l½ inches the other 26 by 11½ inches,— and for their better preservation have been affixed to cloth. The calligraphy is beautiful; and though the edges of the paper haste been frayed, and holes worn in one or two places where the sheets had been folded, there is no difficulty in supplying the few words that have been obliterated and making out the whole of the text. About three inches in depth at the bottom of No. 1, in the right hand corner, is entirely wanting, which may have contained some signatures in addition to those given. The left hand bottom Corner of No. 2 has been similarly torn away, and the same remark with regard to signatures may apply to it. The first document is a letter of jurisdiction, granted by the Freemen Masons of Scotland to William Saint Clair of Roslin. The second purports to have been granted by the Freemen Masons and Hammermen of Scotland to Sir William Saint Clair of Roslin.

Facsimiles and transcripts of these manuscripts are given by D. M. Lyon in his History of the Lodge of Edinburgh. The letter of jurisdiction is probably of a date 1600-1, and the seeund document, probably May 1, 1628. However difficult it may be to decide as to the precise date of these Charters, there are no Masonic manuscripts whose claim to authenticity is more indisputable; for the statements which they contain tally not only with the uniformly accepted traditions of Scotch Freemasonry, but with the written records of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, both of which show the intimate connection that existed between the Freemasonry of that kingdom and the once powerful but now extinct family of Saint Clair.

• SAINT CLAIR, WILLIAM

The Saint Clairs of Roslin, or, as it is often spelled, of Rosslyn, held for more than three hundred years an intimate connection with the history of Freemasonry in Scotland. William Saint Clair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, was, in 1441, appointed by King James II the Patron anal Protector of the Freemasons of Scotland, and the office was made hereditary in his family. Charles Mackie says of him (Preernasen, May, 1851, page 166) that "he was considered one of the best and greatest Masons of the age."

He planned the construction of a most magnificent collegiate church at his palace of Roslin, of which, however, only the chancel and part of the transept were completed. To take part in this design, he invited the most skilful Freemasons from foreign countries; and in order that they might be conveniently lodged and carry on the work with ease and despatch, he ordered them to erect the neighboring town of Roslin, and gave to each of the most worthy a house and lands. After his death, whieh occurred about 1480, the office of hereditary Patron was transmitted to his descendants, who, says Lawrie (History of Freemasonry, page 100), "held their principal annual meetings at Kilwinning." The prerogative of nominating the office-bearers of the Craft, which had always been exercised by the kings of Scotland, appears to have been neglected by James VI after his accession to the throne of England.

Hence the Freemasons, finding themselves embarrassed for want of a Protector, about the year 1600, if that be the real date of the first of the Saint Clair Manuscripts, appointed William Saint Clair of Roslin, for himself and his heirs, their "Patrons and Judges." After presiding over the Order for many years, says Lawrie, William Saint Clair went to Ireland, and in 1630 a second Charter was issued, granting to his son, Sir William Saint Clair, the same power with which his father had been invested. This Charter having been signed by the Masters and Wardens of the principal Lodges of Scotland, Sir William Saint Clair assumed the active administration of the affairs of the Craft, and appointed his Deputies and Wardens, as had been customary with his ancestors. For more than a century after this renewal of the compact between the Laird of Roslin and the Freemasons of Scotland, the Craft continued to flourish under the successive heads of the family.

But in the year 1736, William Saint Clair, to whom the Hereditary Protectorship had descended in due course of succession, having no children of his own, became anxious that the office of Grand Master should not become vacant at his death. Accordingly, he assembled the members of the Lodges of Edinhurgh and its vicinity, and represented to them the good effects that would accrue to them if they should in future have at their head a Grand Master of their own choice, and declared his intention to resign into the hands of the Craft his hereditary right to the office. It was agreed by the assembly that all the Lodges of Scotland should be summoned to appear by themselves, or proxies, on the approaching Saint Andrew's Day, at Edinburgh, to take the necessary steps for the election of a Grand Master.

In compliance with the call, the representatives of thirty-two Lodges met at Edinburgh on the 30th of November 1736, when William Saint Clair tendered the following resignation of his hereditary office:

I, William Saint Clair, of Roslin, Esq., taking into my consideration that the Masons in Scotland did, by several deeds, constitute and appoint trillium and Sir William Saint Clairs of Roslin, my ancestors and their heirs, to be their patrons, protectors judges, or masters, and that my holding or claiming any such jurisdiction, right, or privilege might be prejudicial to the Craft and creation of Masonry, whereof I am a member; and I, being desirous to advance and promote the good and utility of the said Craft of Masonry to the utmost of my power, do therefore hereby, for me and my heirs, renounce quit claim over give, and discharge all right, claim, or pretense that I, or my heirs, had, have, or any ways may have, pretend to, or claim to be, patron, protector, judge, or master of the Masons in Scotland, in virtue of any deed or deeds made and granted by the said Masons, or of any grant or charter made by any of the kings of Scotland to and in favor of the said William and sir William saint Clairs of Roslin, my predecessors, or any other manner or way whatsoever, for now and ever; and I bind and oblige me and my heirs to warrant this present renunciation and discharge at all hands. And I consent to the registration hereof in the books of council and session, or any other judges' books competent, therein to remain for preservation.

Then follows the usual formal and technical termination of a deed (Lawrie's History of Freemasonry, page 148).

The deed of resignation having been accepted, the Grand Lodge proceeded to the election of its office bearers, when William Saint Clair, as was to be expected, was unanimously chosen as Grand Master; an office which, however, he held but for one year, being succeeded in 1737 by the Earl of Cromarty. He lived, however, for more than half a century afterward, and died in January, 1778, in the seventy-eight year of his age.

The Grand Lodge of Scotland was not unmindful of his services to the Craft, and on the announcement of his death a funeral Lodge was convened, when four hundred Brethren, dressed in deep mourning, being present, Sir William Forbes, who was then the Grand Master, delivered an impressive address, in the course of which he paid the following tribute to the character of Saint Clair. After alluding to his voluntary resignation of his high office for the good of the Order, he ad fled:

"His zeal, however, to promote the welfare of our Society was not confined to this single instance; for he continued almost to the very close of life, on all occasions where his influence or his example could prevail, to extend the spirit of Masonry and to increase the number of the Brethren.... To these more conspicuous and public parts of his character I am happy to be able to add, that he possessed in an eminent degree the virtues of a benevolent and good heart—virtues which ought ever to be the distinguishing marks of a true brother" (Lawrie's History of Freemasonry page 224). Brother Charles Mackie, in the London Freemasons Quarterly Retried (1831, page 167), thus described the last day of this venerable patron of the Order:

"William Saint Clair of Roslin, the last of that noble family, was one of the most remarkable personages of his time; although stripped of his paternal title an(l possessions, he walked abroad respected and reverenced. He moved in the first society; and if he did not carry the purse, he was stamped with the impress of nobility. He did not require a cubit to be addled to his stature, for he was considered the stateliest man of his age."

The preceding account by Doctor Mackey of the connection of the Saint Clairs with Seoteh Freemasonry is based almost entirely on Lawrie's History of Freemasonry, 1804, but a later anal more critical writer—D. Murray Lyon (History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, 1873, page 3)—considers the statement that James II invested the Earl of Orkney and Cattiness with the dignity of Grand Master and subsequently made the office hereditary to be "altogether apocryphal." The real fact appears to be, continues Brother Hawkins, that the Operative Masons of Scotland by the Saint Clair Charters did confer upon the Saint Clair family the office of Patron and Protector of the Craft, and that William Saint Clair was made a Freemason in 1735 in order to resign this office, and in return for such apparent magnanimity to be elected in 1736 the first Grand Master of Scotland.

• SAINT CLAIR, WILLIAM OF ROSLIN

First Grand Master Mason of Scotland, elected, in 1736 when the Grand Lodge of Scotland was formed, an office he held for one year only. A good deal of discussion has been had pro and con as to the validity of two old documents known as the Saint Clair Charters, one dated about 1601 and one 1628, in which documents the statement is made that the Operative Masons of Scotland had conferred upon the family of Saint Clair of Roslin the honor of being recognized as Patron and Protector of the Craft. In 1736 when a first Grand Master was to be chosen for the Scottish Grand Lodge, William Saint Clair was made a Freemason in the Lodge Canongate Kilwinning and he also formally resigned all claim to be Patron and Protector of the Freemasons in Scotland on November 30 of the same year at a meeting held at Edinburgh. William Saint Clair died in 1778.

• SAINT CONSTANTINE, ORDER OF

Presumed to have been founded by the Emperor Isaac Angelus Comnenus, in 1190).

• ST. DOMINGO

Sañto Domingo. One of the principal islands of the West Indies. Freemasonry was taken there at an early period in the eighteenth century.

Rebold ( History of Three Grants Lodgers, page 687) said in 1746. It must certainly have been in active condition there at a time not long after, for in 1761 Stephen Morin, who had been deputed by the Council of Emperors of the East and West to propagate the advanced Degrees, selected St. Domingo for the seat of his Grand East, and thence disseminated the system, which resulted in the establishment of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Aecepted Seottish Rite at Charleston, South Carolina. The French Revolution, and the insurrection of the slaves at about the same period, was for a time fatal to the progress of Freemasonry in St. Domingo. Subsequently, the island was divided into two independent governments—that of Dominica, inhabited by whites, and that of Hayti, inhabited by blacks. In each of these a Masonie obedience was organized. The Grand Lodge of Hayti was charged with irregularity in its bformation, and was not recognized by the Grand Lodges of the United States. It has been, however, by those of Europe generally, and a representative from it was accredited at the Congress of Paris, held in 1855.

Freemasonry was revived in Dominica, Rebold says, in the above mentioned work, in 1822; other authorities say in 1855. A Grand Lodge was organized at the City of St. Domingo, December 11, 1858. Dominican Freemasonry has been established under the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and the National Grand Orient of the Dominican Republic divided into four sections, namely, a Grand Lodge, Grand Chapter General, Grand Consistory General, and Supreme Council. The last Body was not recognized by the Mother Council at Charleston, since its establishment is in violation of the Scottish Constitutions, which prescribe one Supreme Council only for all the West India Islands.

• SAINTE CROIX, EMANUEL JOSEPH GUIL HEM DE CLERMONT-LODEVE DE

A French antiquary, and member of the Institute, who was born at Mormoiron, in 1746, and died in 1809. His work, published in two volumes in 1784, and entitled Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur les Mysteres du Paganisme, or Historical and Critical Studies on the Mysteries of Paganism, is one of the most valuable and instructive essays that we have in any language on the ancient mysteries—those religious associations whose history and design so closely connect them with Freemasonry. The later editions were enriched by the valuable notes of Silvestre de Tracy.

• SAINT GEORGE'S DAY

The twenty-third of April. Being the Patron Saint of England, his festival is celebrated by the Grand Lodge. The Constitution requires that "there shall be a Grand Masonic festi val annually on the Wednesday next following Saint George's Day."

• ST. GERMAIN

A town in France, about ten miles from Paris, where James II established his Court after his expulsion from England, and where he died. Doctor Oliver says (Historical Landmarks ii, page 28), and the statement has been repeatedly made by others, that the followers of the dethroned monarch who accompanied him in his exile, carried Freemasonry into France, and laid the foundation of that system of innovation which subsequently threw the Order into confusion by the establishment of a new Degree, which they called the Chevalter Maçon Ecossais, and which they worked in the Lodge of Saint Germain.

But Doctor Oliver has here antedated history. James II died in 1701, and Freemasonry was not introduced into France from England until 1725. The exiled House of Stuart undoubtedly made use of Freemasonry as an instrument to aid in their attempted restoration; but their connection with the Institution must have been after the time of James II, and most probably under the auspices of his grandson, the Young Pretender, Charles Edward.

• SAINT GERMAIN, THE COUNT OF

Also known as Count de Bellamura in Venice; as the Chevalier de Schöning at Pisa; as Chevalier Well done at Milan; and at Genoa as Count Soltikow. authentic record of his origin. First heard of in Europe as the Count de Saint Germain, in 1750 Introduced into French society and became Popular in Paris. Handsome, able musician, especially upon the violin, expert magician, inveterate gambler accomplished linguist, and the most reasonable account is that he was the natural son of an Italian princess, born about 1710, at San Germano, Savoy This account gives his father as a local tax-collector Rotondo. Some accounts give his birthplace at Letmeritz, in Bohemia; he was pronounced an Alsatian Jew named Simon Wolff by the Marquis de Crequy. Some place him as the Marquis de Betmar, born in Portugal, others state he was a Spanish Jesuit, named Aymar. Frederick II of Prussia named him "a man no one has ever been able to make out."

He laid claim to the highest rank of Freemasonry, the Order being at that time strong in France, claiming also that he was over five hundred years of age, had been born in Chaldaea, possessed the secrets of the Egyptian sages, master of the art of transmutation of metals, which he said he had learnt in Hindustan, that he could produce pure diamonds by the artificial crystallization of pure carbon.

His familiarity with modern history and the polities of the time were startling and he made a remarkable prophecy in the case of Kinv Louis XV Ellis advertised attainments were of a character to win him renown and he became an intimate of Frederick the Great, remaining long at his Court. He was concerned in the conspiracies at St. Petersburg in 1762. He went to Germany, 1774, later traveled in Italy and Denmark, founded the Society of Saint Jackin which was afterwards known as the Saint Joachim. In 1783 he declared that he was weary of immortality and resigned it at Eckernfiorde, in Schleswig.

• ST. HELENA

An island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Lodges have been chartered from time to time by English authority at James Town, St. Helena. Several-early ones became extinct and the first to be successful was St. Helena Lodge, warranted on April 6, 1843. Itsoriginal papers were lost or destroyedwithin two years and a duplicate Charter was granted on May 3, 1845.

• SAINT JOHN, FAVORITE BROTHER OF

The Eighth Degree of the Swedish Rite.

• SAINT JOHN, LODGE OF

See Lodge of Saint John

• SAINT JOHN OF JERUSALEM, KNIGHT OF

See Knight of Saint John of Jerusalem

• ST. JOHNS' AND YORK MASONS

In England, Scotland, and Ireland at the beginning of the first Grand Lodge in 1717 there was an unknown but comparatively large number of Lodges and Masons called generally St. Johns'. St. Johns' Lodges prwor to 1717 may have been Lodges without any copy of the Old Charges, were therefore seli-constituted as the meaning of that term would have obtained in that time; also, there were a number of Masons not in any Lodge, and apparently in some instances "one Mason Snot in any Lodge] would make another.

"After the new Grand Lodge system was established a number of the St. Johns' Lodges (one may believe a larger number than existing records account for) continued to work (and not as Operative Lodges) but never joined the Grand Lodge. Yet during the first half of the Eighteenth Century these were accepted as genuine Lodges, and their members often Visited regular (on the Roll of Grand Lodge) Lodges. The Rev. George Oliver had a muddled theory that Free masonry had been revived and reformed by St. John the Evangelist and for that reason he called Craft Masonry "St. John's Masonry." Owing to the large circulation of his books in America this term came into general use (it is obsolete now); Oliver's St. John~s Masons had no connection in thought or theory with the St. Johns' Masons familiar to Eighteenth Century Lodges. One of the many proofs of the numerousness of St. Johns' Masons is given by the records of Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18 (probably older than Grand Lodge). On page 168 of his history of that Lodge Arthur Heiron writes: "In olden days there were certain Lodges who were never regularly constituted, [by Grand Lodge] but merely recognized St. John as their leader. They were looked upon as 'Unattaehed' or 'Independent Lodges,' but their members w ere allowed to visit the regular [on Grand Lodge Rolls] Lodges on terms of equality, signing themselves as 'St. Johns' Men'; paying generally an extra fee. 'Old Dundee' received many such Brethren as visitors, and from 1748 to 177O at least 162 [six per year] signed our Minute Book ..."

When the Antient Grand Lodge was formed in 1751 it described itself as founded according to the Aneient Institutions of York. Its members often called themselves, and were called by others, York Masons. When the Antient Provineial Grand Lodge of Canada was formed in 1792 at Montreal (and Canadian Masonry influenced New England and New York Masonry in many ways) it became known AS the York Body and its members called themselves York Masons. The many Antient chartered Lodges which were warranted during or prior to the Revolution in the Colonies also called themselves York Masons. The term "York" was therefore introduced into America by Canadian and British Lodges and Brethren, and hence did not originate here.

In his introduction to Memorials of the Mason* Union, William James Hughan animadverts on the American use of "York," which he took to be an American-made myth. (This Introduction, famous in 1874, is now obsolete.)

Elsewhere he accuses American Masons of "boasting" of being "York Masons." Bro. Hughan was in his own generation second to none as a cautious, aeeurate, historical scholar, but he had the misfortune to be in some degree in error, and oftentimes w holly in error, in his statements of fact about American Masonry. His attribution of the York myth and boasting to us is one of his mistakes. We ereated no myth about York, for as said above the term came straight from Britain and Canada; we never boasted about it. Today the word "Yorl;" has lost any meaning it was ever supposed to have, and when used, if ever it still is used, functions as a mere label to distinguish the Craft and Chapter Rites from Templarism and the Scottish Rite.

• SAINT JOHN'S MASONRY

The Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of Scotland (184e,, chapter ii) declare that that Body "practises and recognizes no degrees of Masonry but those of Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason denominated Saint John's Masonry."

• SAINT JOHN'S ORDER

In a system of Freemasonry which Doctor Oliver says (Mirror for the Johannites, pa(re 58) was "used, as it is confidently affirmed, in the fourteenth century" (but it is doubtful if it could be traced farther back than the early part of the seventeenth), this appellation occurs in the obligation:

That you will always keep, guard, and conceal,

And from this time you never will reveal

Either to M. M., F. C., or Apprentice

Of Saint John's Order, what our grand intent is.

The same title of Joannis Ordo is given in the document of uncertain date known as the Charter of Cologne.

• SAINT JOHN THE ALMONER

The son of the King of Cyprus, and born in that island in the sixth century He was fleeted Patriarch of Alexandria, and has been canonized by both the Greek and Roman churches, his festival among the former occurring on the 11th of November, and among the latter on the 23d of January. Bazot (Manuel du Franc-Mason, page 144) thinks that it is this saint, and not Saint John the Evangelist or Saint John the Baptist, who is meant as the true patron of our Order. "'He quit his country and the hope of a throne," says this author, into go to Jerusalem, that he might generously aid and assist the knights and pilgrims.

He founded a hospital and organized a fraternity to attend upon sick and wounded Christians, and to bestow pecuniary aid upon the pilgrims who visited the Holy Sepulcher. Saint John, who was worthy to become the patron of a society whose only object is charity, exposed his life a thousand times in the cause of virtue. Neither war, nor pestilence, nor the fury of the infidels, could deter him from pursuits of benevolence. But death, at length, arrested him in the midst of his labors. Yet he left the example of his virtues to the Brethren, who have made it their duty to endeavor to imitate them. Rome canonized him under the name of Saint John the Almoner, or Saint John of Jerusalem; and the Freemasons—whose temples, overthrown by the barbarians, he had caused to be rebuilt—selected him with one accord as their patron." Doctor Oliver, however (Mirror for the Johannite Masons, page 39), very properly shows the error of appropriating the patronage of Freemasonry to this saint, since the festivals of the Order are June 24th and Deeember 27th, while those of Saint John the Almoner are January 23d and November 11th. He has, however, been selected as the patron of the Masonic Order of the Templars, and their Commanderies are dedicated to his honor on amount of his charity to the poor, whom he called his Masters, because he owed them all service, and on account of - his establishment of hospitals for the succor of pilgrims in the East.

• SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

One of the Patron Saints of Freemasonry, and at one time, indeed, the only one, the name of Saint John the Evangelist having been introduced subsequent to the sixteenth century. His festival occurs on the 24th of June, and is very generally celebrated by the Masonie Fraternity. Dalcho (Ahiman Rezon, page 150) says that "the stern integrity of Saint John the Baptist, which induced him to forego every minor consideration in discharging the obligations he owed to God; the unshaken firmness with sA>hieh he met martyrdom rather than betray his duty to his Master; his steady reproval of vice, and continued preaching of repentance and virtue. make him a fit patron of the Masonic institution." The Charter of Cologne says: "We celebrate, annually, the memory of Saint John, the Forerunner of Christ and the Patron of our Community." The Knights Hospitaler also dedicated their Order to him; and the ancient expression of our instrucw tions, which speaks of a "Lodge of the Holy Saint John of Jerusalem," probably refers to the same saint.

Krause, in his Kunsturkunden (pages 295 to 305), gives abundant historical proofs that the earliest Freemasons adopted Saint John the Baptist, and not Saint John the Evangelist as their patron. It is worthy of note that the Grand Lodge of England was revived on Saint John the Baptist's Day, in 1717 (Constitutions, 1738, page 109), and that the Annual Feast was kept on that day until 1725, when it was held for the first time on the Festival of the Evangelist (see page 119 of the above edition). Lawrie says (history of Freemasonry, page 152) that the Seottish Freemasons always kept the festival of the Baptist until 1737, when the Grand Lodge changed the time of the annual election to Saint Andrew's Day.

• SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST

One of the Patron Saints of Freemasonry, whose festival is celebrated on the 27th of December. His constant admonition, in his Epistles, to the cultivation of brotherly love, and the mystical nature of his Apocalyptic visions, have been, perhaps, the principal reasons for the veneration paid to him by the Craft. Notwithstanding a well-known tradition, all documentary evidence shows that the eonneetion of the name of the Evangelist with the Masonie Order is to be dated long after the sixteenth century, before which time Saint John the Baptist was exclusively the patron saint of Freemasonry. The two are, however, now always united, for reasons set forth in the article on the Dedication of Lodges, which see.

• SAINT LEGER

See Aldworth, Mrs

• SAINT MARTIN, LOUIS CLAUDE

A mystical writer and Masonic leader of considerable reputation in the eighteenth century, and the founder of the Rite of Martinism. He w as born at Amboise, in France, on January 18, 1743, being descended from a family distinguished in the military service of the kingdom. Saint Martin when a youth made great progress in his studies, and became the master of several aneient and modern languages.

After leaving school, he entered the army, in aeeordanee with the custom of his family, becoming a member of the regiment of Foix. But after six years of service, he retired from a profession which he found uncongenial with his fondness for metaphysical pursuits. He then traveled in Switzerland, Germany, England, and Italy, and finally retired to Lyons, where he remained for three years in a state of almost absolute seclusion, known to but few persons, and pursuing his philosophie studies.

He then repaired to Paris, where, notwithstanding the tumultuous scenes of the revolution which was working around, he remained unmoved by the terrible events of the day, and intent only on the prosecution of his thcosophie studies. Attracted by the mystical systems of Boehme and Swedenborg, he became himself a mystic of no mean pretensions, and attracted around him a crowd of disciples, who were content, as they saids to hear, without understanding the teachings of their leader.

In 1775 appeared his first and most important work, entitled Des Erreurs et de la Vérité, ail les Hommes rappelés au principe universel de la Science, or Some Errors and Truth, where Men recall the Universal Principle of Knowledge. This work, which contained an exposition of the ideology of Saint Martin, acquired for its author, by its unintelligible transcendentalism, the title of the Kant of Germany. Saint Martin had published this work under the pseudonym of the l Unknown Philoso pher, We Philoso pie inconnu; whence he was subsequently known by this name, which was also assumed by solre of his Masonic adherents; and even a Degree bearing that title was invented and inserted in the Rite of Philalethes. The treatise Des Erreurs et de la Vérité was in fact made a sort of text- w book by the Philalethans, and highly recommended by the Order of the Initiated Knights and Brothers of Asia, whose system was in fact a compound of theosophy and mysticism. It was so popular, that between 1775 and 1784 it had been through five editions.

Saint Martin, in the commencement of his Masonic career, attached himself to Martinez Paschalis, of whom he was one of the most prominent disciples. But he subsequently attempted a reform of the system of Paschalis, and established what he called a Rectified Rite, but which is better known as the Rite or system of Martinism, which consisted of ten Degrees. It was itself subsequently reformed, and, being reduced to seven Degrees, was introduced into some of the Lodges of Germany under the name of the Reformed Ecossism of Saint Martin. The theosophic doctrines of Saint Martin were introduced into the Masonic Lodges of Russia by Count Gabrianko and Admiral Pleshcheyeff, and soon became popular. Under them the Martinist Lodges of Russia became distinguished not only for their Masonic and religious spirit—although too much tinged with the mysticism of Jacob Boehme and their founder—but for an active zeal in practical works of charity of both a private and public character. The character of Saint Martin has been much mistaken, especially by Masonic writers. Those who, like Voltaire, have derided his metaphysical theories, seem to have forgotten the excellence of his private character, his kindness of heart, his amiable manners, and his varied and extensive erudition. Nor should it be forgotten that the true object of all his Masonic labors was to introduce into the Lodges of France a spirit of pure religion. His theory of the origin of Freemasonry was not, however, based on any historical research, and is of no value, for he believed that it was an emanation of the Divinity, and was to be traced to the very beginning of the world.

• SAINT NICAISE

A considerable sensation was produced in Masonic circles by the appearance at Frankfort, in 1755, of a work entitled Saint Nicaise, oder eine Sammlung merkwürdiger Maürerischer Briefe, für Freimaürer und die es nicht, Saint Nicaise, or a Collection of curious Masonic papers for Freemasons and others. A second edition was issued in 1786. Its title-page asserts it to be a translation from the French, but it was really written by doctor Starck. It professes to contain the letters of a French Freemason who was traveling on account of Freemasonry, and having learned the mode of work in England and Germany, had become dissatisfied with both, and had retired into a cloister in France. It was really intended, although Starck had abandoned Freemasonry, to defend his system of Spiritual Templarism, in opposition to that of the Baron Von Hund. Accordingly, it was answered in 1786 by Von Sprengseisen, who was an ardent friend and admirer of Von Hund, in a work entitled Anti Saint Nicaise, which was immediately followed by two other essays by the same author, entitled Archimedes, and Scala Algebraica (Economica These three works have become exceedingly rare.

• SAINT PAUL'S CHURCH

As Saint Paul's, the Cathedral Church of London, was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren—who is called (in the Book of Constitutions, 1738, page 107) the Grand Master of Freemasons—and some writers have advanced the theory that Freemasonry took its origin at the construction of that edifice. In the Fourth Degree of Fessler's Rite—which is occupied in the critical examination of the various theories on the origin of Freemasonry— among the seven sources that are considered, the building of Saint Paul's Church is one. Nicolai does not positively assert the theory; but he thinks it not an improbable one, and believes that a new system of symbols was at that time invented. It is said that there was, before the revival in 1717, an old Lodge of Saint Paul's; and it is reasonable to suppose that the Operative Masons engaged upon the building were united with the architects and men of other professions in the formation of a Lsdge, under the regulation which no longer restricted the Institution to Operative Masonry. But there is no authentic historical evidence that Freemasonry first took its rise at the building of Saint Paul's Church.

• SAINTS JOHN

The Holy Saints John, so frequently mentioned in the instructions of Symbolic Freemasonry, are Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, which see. The original dedication of Lodges.was to the Holy Saint John, meaning the Baptist.

• SAINTS JOHN, FESTIVALS OF

See Festivals

• SAINT VICTOR, LOUIS GUILLEMAIN DE

A French Masonic writer, who published, in 1781, a work in Adonhiramite Masonry, entitled Receuil Précieuz de la Maçonnerie Adonhiramite, or Choice Collection of Adonhiramite Masonry. This volume contained the instructions of the first four Degrees, and was followed, in 1787, by another, which contained the higher degrees of the Rite. If Saint Victor was not the inventor of this Rite, he at least modified and established it as a working system, and, by his writings and his labors, gave to it whatever popularity it at one time possessed. Subsequent to the publication of his Receuil Précieuz, he wrote his Origine de la Maçonnerie Adonhiramite, a learned and interesting work, in which he seeks to trace the source of the Masonic initiation to the Mysteries of the Egyptian Priesthood.

• SAKINAT

The Divine Presence. The Shekinah, which see.

• SAKTI

The female energy of Brahma, of Vishnu, or especially of Siva. This lascivious worship was inculcated in the Tantra meaning Instrument of Faith, a Sanskrit work, found under various forms, and regarded by its numerous Brahmanical and other followers as a fifth Veda.

• SALAAM

The name of the Arabic form of salutation, which is by bowing the head and bringing the extended arms forward from the sides until the thumbs touch, the palms being down.

• SALADIM

More properly Salah-ed-din, Yussuf ibn Ayub, the Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in the time of Richard Coeur-de Lion, and the founder of the Ayubite dynasty. As the great Moslem hero of the Third Crusade, and the beau-ideal of Moslem chivalry, he is one of the most imposing characters presented to us by the history of that period. Born at Takreit, 1137; died at Damascus, 1193. In his man hood he had entered the service of Noureddin.

He became Grand Vizier of the Fatimite Calif, and received the title of the Victorious Prince. At Noured din's death, Salah-ed-din combated the succession and became the Sultan of Syria and Egypt. For ten succeeding years he was in petty warfare with the Christians until at Tiberias, in 1187, the Christians were terribly punished for plundering a wealthy caravan on its way to Mecca. The King of Jerusalem, two Grand Masters, and many warriors were taken captives Jerusalem stormed, and many fortifications reduced This roused Western Europe; the Kings of France and England, with a mighty host, soon made their appearance; they captured Acre in 1191, and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, with an invading force, twice defeated the Sultan, and obtained a treaty in 1192, by which the coast from Jaffa to Tyre was yielded to the Christians. Salah-ed-din becomes a prominent character in two wof the Consistorial Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, mainly exemplifying the universality of Freemasonry Brother Lessing has in his dramatic poem, Nathan the Wise, presented a most romantic and edifying character in an Eastern Monarch of this kind to illustrate Masonic toleration.

• SALFI, FRANCISCO

An Italian philosopher and litterateur, who was born at Cozenza, in Calabria January 1, 1759, and died at Passy, near Paris, September, 1832. He was at one time Professor of history and Philosophy at Milan. He was a prolific writer, and the author of many works on history and political economy. He published, also, several poems and dramas, and received, in 1811, the prize given by the Lodge at Leghorn for a Masonic essay upon the utility of the Craft and its relation to philanthropy and morals, and entitled Della utiltà delta Franca Massoneria sotto it rapporto filantropico é morale.

• SALIX

A significant word in the advanced Degrees, invented, most probably, at first for the system of the Council of Emperors of the East and West, and transferred to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. It is derived, say the old French rituals, from the initials of a part of a sentence, and has, therefore, no other meaning.

• SALLE DES PAS PERDUS

A French expression meaning the Hall of the Lost Steps. The French thus call the anteroom in which visitors are placed before their admission into the Lodge. The Germans call it the Fore-Court, Vorhof, and sometimes, as with the French, der Saal der verlornen Schritte. Lenning says that it derives its name from the fact that every step taken before entrance into the Fraternity, or not made in accordance with the precepts of the Order, is considered as lost.

• SALOMONIS SANCTIFICATUS ILLUMINATUS, MAGNUS JEHOVA

The elaborate title, somewhat extravagant as Sanctified, illuminated, of the reigning Master or third class of the Illuminated Chapter according to the Swedish system.

• SALSETTE

An island in the Bay of Bombay, celebrated for stupendous caverns excavated artificially out of the solid rock, with a labor which must, says Grose, have been equal to that of erecting the Pyramids, and which were appropriated to the initiations in the Ancient Mysteries of India.

• SALT

In the Helvetian or Swiss instructions, salt is added to corn, wine, and oil as one of the elements of consecrations because it is a symbol of the wisdom and learning which should characterize a Freemason's Lodge. When the foundation-stone of a Lodge is laid, the Helvetian ceremonial directs that it shall be sprinkled with salt, and this formula be used: "May this undertaking, contrived by wisdom, be executed in strength and adorned with beauty, so that it may be a house where peace, harmony, and brotherly love shall perpetually reign." This is but carrying out the ancient instructions of Leviticus (ii, 13)." And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt." Significant as are the references in the Bible to salt, as the rubbing of salt on the new-born child (Ezekiel xvi, 4); the allusions in Mark (ix, 49, 50)."

For every one shall be salted with fire and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltiness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another;" the burnt offerings of Ezekiel (xliii, 24) were sprinkled with salt, "And thou shalt offer them before the Lord, and the priests shall east salt upon them, and they shall offer them up for a burnt offering unto the Lord;" the "covenant of salt for ever before the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee" of Numbers (xvii, 19) and again in Second Chronieles (xii, 5), these are all reminders of the ancient importance of salt, the symbol of pledged affiliation, as in the weighty and warning utterance of Jesus in Matthew (v, 13)." Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It ins thenceforth good for nothing, but to be east out, and to be trodden under foot of men." Salt to the ancient world was pronounced a substance dear to the gods (Plato, Timaeus) and to break bread and eat salt at a meal with others were symbols of lighted faith and loyalty.

• SALUTATION

Leaning says, that in accordance with the usage of the Operative Masons, it was formerly the custom for a strange Brother, when he visited a Lodge, to bring to it such a salutation as this: "From the Right Worshipful Brethren and Fellows of a Right Worshipful and Holy Lodge of Saint John." The English salutation, at the middle of the eighteenth century, was: "From the Right Worshipful Brothers and Fellows of the Right Worshipful and Holy Lodge of Saint John, from whence I come and greet you thrice heartily well. " The custom has become obsolete, although there is an allusion to it in the answer to the question, "Whence come you?" in the modern catechism of the Entered Apprentice's Degree. But Leaning is incorrect in saying that the salutation went out of use after the introduction of Certificates. The salutation was, as has been seen, in use in the eighteenth century, and Doctor Mackey noted that Certificates were required as far back at least as the year 1683.

• SALUTEM

The Latin word for Health and used as a greeting. When the Romans wrote friendly Setters they prefixed the letter S as the initial of Salutem, or health, and thus the writer expressed a wish for the health of his correspondent. At the head of Masonic documents we often find this initial letter thrice repeated, thus: S. S. S., with the same signification of Health, Health, Health. It is equivalent to the English expression, Thrice Greeting.

• SALUTE MASON

Among the Stone-Masons of Germany, in the Middle Ages, a distinction was made between the Grussmaurer or Wortmaurer, the Salute Mason or Word Mason, and the Schriftmaurer or Letter Mason. The Salute Masons had signs, words, and other modes of recognition by which they could make themselves known to each other; while the Letter Masons, who were also called Brieftrager or Letter Bearers, had no mode, when they visited strange Lodges, of proving themselves, except by the Certificates or written testimonials which they brought with them. Thus, in the examination of a German Stone-Mason, which has been published in Fallou's Mysterien der Freimaurerei (page 25), and copied thence by Findel ( History of Freemasonry, page 659), we find these questions proposed to a visiting Brother, and the answers thereto:

Warden. Stranger, are you a Letter Mason or a Salute Mason?

Stranger. I am a Salute Mason.

Warden. How shall I know you to be such?

Stranger. By my salute and words of my mouth.

• SALVADOR

See San Salvador

• SAMARIA

A city situated near the center of Palestine, and built by Omri, King of Israel, about 925 B.C. It was the metropolis of the Kingdom of Israel, or of the Ten Tribes, and was, during the exile, peopled by many Pagan foreigners sent to supply the place of the deported inhabitants. Hence it became a seat of idolatry, and was frequently denounced bv the prophets (see Samaritans).

• SAMARITAN, GOOD

See Good Samaritan

• SAMARITANS

The Samaritans were originally the descendants of the ten revolted tribes who had chosen Samaria for their metropolis. Subsequently, the Samaritans were conquered by the Assyrians under Shalmaneser, who carried the greater part of the inhabitants into captivity, and introduced colonies in their place from Babylon, Cultah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. These colonists, who assumed the name of Samaritans, brought with them of course the idolatrous creed and practices of the region from which they emigrated. The Samaritans, therefore, at the time of the rebuilding of the second Temple, were an idolatrous race, and as such abhorrent to the Jews. When they asked permission to assist in the pious work of rebuilding the Temple, Zerubbabel, with the rest of the leaders, replied, "Ye have nothing to do with us to build a house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us."

Hence it was that, to avoid the possibility of these idolatrous Samaritans polluting the holy work by their co-operation, Zerubbabel found it necessary to demand of every one who offered himself as an assistant in the undertaking that he should give an accurate account of his lineage, and prove himself to have been a descendant, which no Samaritan could be, of those faithful Giblemites who worked at the building of the first Temple.

There were many points of religious difference between the Jews and the Samaritans. One was, that they denied the authority of any of the Scriptures except the Pentateuch; another was that they asserted that it was on Mount Gerizim, and not on Mount Moriah, that Melehizedek met Abraham when returning from the slaughter of the kings, and that here also he came to sacrifice Isaac, whence they paid no reverence to Moriah as the site of the Holy House of the Lord. A few of the sect have long survived at Nabulus. They did not exceed one hundred and fifty. They had a High Priest, and observed all the feasts of the ancient Jews, and especially that of the Passover, which they kept on Mount Gerizim with all the formalities of the ancient rites.

• SAMOTHRACIAN MYSTERIES

The Mysteries of the Cabiri are sometimes so called because the principal seat of their celebration was in the Island of Samothrace. "I ask," says Voltaire (Dictionary of Philosophy), "who were these Hierophants, these sacred Freemasons, who celebrated their Ancient Mysteries of Samothracia, and whence came they and their gods Cabiri?" (see Cabiric Mysteries).

• SANCTUARY

The Holy of Holies in the Temple of Solomon (see Holy of Holies).

• SANCTUM SANCTORUM

Latin for Holy of Holies, which see.

• SANDALPHON

In the Rabbinieal system of Angelology, one of the three angels who receive the prayers of the Israelites and weave crowns from them Longfellow used this idea in a most beautiful poem.

• SANDWICH ISLANDS

Freemasonry was first introduced into those far islands of the Pacific by the Grand Orient of France, which issued a Dispensation for the establishment of a Lodge about 1848, or perhaps earlier; but it was not prosperous, and soon became dormant. In 1852, the Grand Lodge of California granted a Warrant to Hawaiian Lodge, No 21, on its register at Honolulu. Royal Arch and Templar Freemasonry have both been since introduced. Honolulu Chapter was established in 1859, and Honolulu Commandery in 1871 (see Oceania).

• SAN GRAAL

Derived, probably, from the old French, sang real, the true blood; although other etymologies have been proposed. The San Graal is represented, in legendary history, as being an emerald dish in which our Lord had partaken of the last supper. Joseph of Arimathea, having further sanctified it by receiving into it the blood issuing from the five wounds, afterward carried it to England. Subsequently it disappeared in consequence of the sins of the land, and was long lost sight of. When Merlin established the Knights of the Round Table, he told them that the San Graal should be discovered by one of them, but that he only could see it who was without sin. one day, when Arthur was holding a high feast with his Knights of the Round Table, the San Graal suddenly appeared to him and to all his chivalry, and then as suddenly disappeared. The consequence was that all the knights took upon them a solemn vow to seek the Holy Dish. The Quest of the San Graal became one of the most prominent myths of what has been called the Arthuric Cycle. The old French romance of the forte d'Arthur, or Death of Arthur, which was published by Caxton in 1485, contains the adventures of Sir Galahad in search of the San Graal.

There are several other romances of which this wonderful vessel, invested with the most marvelous properties is the subject. The Quest of the San Graal very foreibly reminds us of the Search for the Lost Word. Thc symbolism is precisely the same—the loss and the recovery being but the lesson of death and eternal life—so that the San Graal in the Arthurian Myth, and the Lost Word in the Masonic Legend, seem to be identical in object and design. Hence it is not surprising that a French writer, De Caumont, should have said (Bulletin Monument, page 129) that "the poets of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, who composed the romances of the Round Table made Joseph of Arimathea the chief of a military and religious Freemasonry."

There is a considerable literature attached to the history of this romance written about the famous talisman. Even the name has been subjected frequently, as Doctor Mackey points out, to various interpretations. Probably the most of these commcntators today accept the first word as a mutiliated form from the Latin meaning holy. The text compiled and translated by Sir Thomas Malory, and the one best known to English students, is now usually mentioned as the Quest of the Holy Grail, from the French Quête du Saint Grail. Malory himself, by the way, being also much of a puzzle, Sir Sidney Lee (Dictionary of National Biography) admits he could find no one of that name to meet the conditions. But Professor S. L. Kittredge in his inquiry, Who was Sir Thomas Malory? Harvard Studies and Notes (1896, volume v), identifies him with a Warwickshire, England, gentleman who died on March 14, 1470. Professor W. W. Skeat in the preface to Joseph of Arimathie, published by the Early English Text Society, traces the word grail through the older French to graal and great, thence to a Low Latin original gradale, gradalis or grasale, a flat dish, but on the surface this derivation appears to us more hopeful than scientifically convincing. The legend has been exquisitely told in choice prose and verse since at least the Middle Ages gave it prominence.

• SANHEDRIM

The highest judicial tribunal among the Jews. It consisted of seventy-two persons besides the High Priest. It is supposed to have originated with Moses, who instituted a Council of Seventy on the occasion of a rebellion of the Israelites in the wilderness. The room in which the Sanhedrim met was a rotunda, half of which was built without the Temple and half within, the latter part being that in which the judges sat. The Nasi, or Prince, who was generally the High Priest, sat on a throne at the end of the hall; his Deputy, called Ab-beth-din, at his right hand; and the Subdeputy, or Chaean, at his left; the other senators being ranged in order on each side. Most of the members of this Couneil were Priests or Levites, though men in private stations of life were not excluded.

According to the English system of the Royal Arch, a Chapter of Royal Arch Masons represents the Sanhedrim, and therefore it is a rule that it shall never consist of more than seventy-two members, although a smaller number is competent to transact any business. This theory is an erroneous one, for in the time of Zerubbabel there was no Sanhadrim, that tribunal having been first established after the Macedonian conquest. The place in the Temple where the Sanhedrim met was called Gabbatha, or the Pavement; it was a room whose floor was formed of ornamental square Stones, and it is from this that the Masonic idea has probably arisen that the floor of the Lodge is a tessellated or mosaic pavement.

• SAN SALVADOR

The capital of the Rcpublie of Salvador, Central America. Freemasonry was brought into this State quite early, but in 1882 it was suppressed. On March 5, 1882, Rafael Zaldwar, President of the Republic, organized the brethren into a Lodge, Excelsior No. 17, chartered by the Grand Orient of Central America. Another, Caridad y Constancia (Charity and Constancy) No. 18,was opened at Tecla.

On July 14, 1908, the Grand Lodge Cuscatlan do San Salvador was formed by three Lodges, Excelsior, Fuerza y Materia, and Manazan. It was recognized in 1917 by the Grand Lodge of New York. Brother Street, however, in 1922 report, writes:—"It has discredited itself very much in the eyes of the regular Jurisdictions by the readiness with which it recognizes the irregular bodies." SANTA FE, LODGE AT.

The Mexican War was fought in the Far West by young volunteers from the still-new States of Illinois and Missouri. It happened that John Rolls, Colonel of the Third Regiment of Missouri Volunteers, was Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Missouri; when he discovered a number of Masons in his lines he issued a dispensation for Missouri Military Lodge, No. 86; on June 15, 1847, this Lodge was instituted at Independence, into., the eastern terminal of the Santa Fe Trail; and on October 14, 1847, received its Charter. The Lodge held one Communication there; it held its next Communication in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Between those two Communications the young men Of Missouri marched 900 miles—a feat of epic proportion; and why it has so nearly escaped the attention of historians, novelists, and poets is one among the many mysteries of the West, which today, and excepting only for a few small populated enclaves, is as empty and almost as unknown as it was then; and especially was it epic because the men marched where never an army had marched before, through lands of hostile tribes, and deserts, and rattlesnakes without number (the existence of which, and still without number, is kept a secret by every Chamber of Commerce west of the Pecos River, they and earthquakes both). From Santa Fe the troops moved down into Old Mexico; the last Minutes (of a little book in the archives of the Grand Lodge of Missouri) recorded a Communication in Santa Cruz, Old Mexico, July 15, 1848. The soldiers they had left behind formed another regimental Lodge at Santa Fe, and it worked as No. 87 until Aug. 14, 1848.

The Masons left permanently behind in New Mexico after peace was declared petitioned the Grand Lodge of Maryland for a Dispensation; receiving no reply it petitioned Missouri, but again received no immediate answer. Then, under date of May 8, 1851, it received a Charter from Missouri under the name of Montezuma, No. 109, and it was instituted the following Aug. 22. This Lodge stood alone in an unsettled empire now divided among thirteen Grand Jurisdictions; a thousand miles from the fringes of the frontier; among an unfriendly, Spanish-speaking, Roman Catholic populace, with Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo Indian peoples along the edges, and at the same time the rendezvous for some of the wildest, most intractable white adventurers on the Continent. But it flourished, and for many years was Lodge, social center, meeting hall, church—it had even to make a cemetery, since the local Romanists would permit no Protestant burials. But the Lodge was strong because in its membership were the men who were to make new Mexico, first as a Territory, then as a State, among them being Christopher Carson, St. Vrain, Lafayette Head.

Carson himself later was to become a charter member of the Lodge at Taos, founded in 1859. Carson's brother in law, Charles Bent, first Territorial Governor, svas also a member in Taos, and it was there that he was assassinated by a crew of Indians, drunken white men, etc., egged on by the notorious Padre Martinez. Carson himself had once been a runaway apprentice, who "took to the Santa Fe Trail," and who found "out there" the country "for which he was born" a gentleman, a man of great dignity, intelligent, a master authority on Indians, an heroic leader in battle, one of the truly great men of the West—who had nothing in common with the boys' books hero "Kit" Carson who was supposed to go about scalping Indians and carrying two revolvers. He was loved, trusted, admired by everybody, Spanish Americans, Indians, and "Americans," even by the beaver trappers, "the mountany men," a tougher, wilder, more primitive set than the Apaches themselves.

NOTE. On page 181 it is stated that Carson died in Santa Fe. This was an error. He died of heart failure aged 58, on his ranch on the Los Animas, in Texas. Masons employed a Spanish-American native to bring his body back for re-interment in his old home, at Taos N. M., in a small plot of ground near his house. In the long tedious return with the body the Spanish-Ameriean began to have supernatural fears. His peneil-written memo of expenses is in the vault of the Grand Lodge of New Mexieo at Albuquerque; in an entry probably unique in Masonie expense accounts is the explanation of what he did to allay his fears: $5.00 for an image of the Virgin Mary!

• SANTO DOMINGO

See Saint Domingo

• SAPICOLE, THE

Thory (Acta Latomorum i, page 339) says that a Degree by this name is cited in the nomenclature of Fustier, and is also found in the collection of Viany.

• SAPPHIRE

The Hebrew word, sometimes pronounced sap-peer. The second stone in the second row of the High Priest's breastplate, and was appropriated to the Tribe of Naphtali, The Chief Priest of the Egyptians wore round his neck an image of truth and justice made of sapphire.

• SARACENS

Although originally only an Arab tribe, the word Saracens was afterward applied to all the Arabs who embraced the tenets of Mohammed. The Crusaders especially designated as Saracens those Mohammedans who had invaded Europe, and whose possessions of the Holy Land gave rise not only to the Crusades, but to the organization of the military and religious orders of Templars and Hospitalers, whose continual wars with the Saracens constitute the most important chapters of the history of those times.

• SARAJEVO

An unfriendly fate dogs the steps of women who write about Freemasonry, and pro or con; if one of them makes up a book about it by rewriting some old volume too obscure for anybody ever to have heard of, a Masonic book-worm (and there are many of them) ungallantly turns up that obscure volume and gives her away; if she writes an attack on the Fraternity from "original documents loaned by one of the chancelleries" some unexpected expert spoils everything by proving it to be a forgery. This fate shadowed the unfortunate Miss Elizabeth Durham, an English lady, who set out to prove that Masons had both planned and carried out the assassination of the Austrian Arch Duke and his wife at Sarajevo in 1914.

She had for authority a document which she had been told was the official minutes of the trial, and this document proved that the accused men had been Masons, and had received their instructions from a Grand Lodge. But when the actual and official records were finally made public they contained nothing in common with Miss Durham's document; she had been "had."

Her document purported to have been written by "Professor Pharos"; it was discovered that "Professor Pharos" was Father Puntigam, leader of the Jesuits in Sarajevo. Even the Rev. Father Hermann Gruber, S. J., who was an Anti-Mason by profession, protested against this dreadful hoax; he pointed out among other things that whereas the assassins were under twenty years of age, it was the common rule in Danubian Masonry to accept no candidate under twenty-five. Miss Durham also relied on a Mr. H. C. Norman, another English Anti-Mason, and on Horatio Bottomley, later to be proved a swindler. Her book was entitled The Sarajevo Crime.

NOTE — The continent-wide Anti-Masonic campaign which was carried on between the two World Wars shows nowhere any evidence of spontaneity, and still less of sincerity; both the external and internal evidences prove it to have been planned; character assassination, the outright forging of documents, newspaper campaigns of innuendo, open attacks known to be false but made to start talk, these same techniques appear and re-appear from Czecho-Slovakia to Spain, and including both Ireland and France—there was much more open and dangerous Anti-Masonry in England than American Masons heard about because of the lack of any press of their own.

• SARDINIA

Freemasonry was introduced into this kingdom in 1737 (Rebold, History of Three Grand Lodges, page 686).

• SARDIUS

Hebrew, Odem. The first stone in the first row of the High Priest's breastplate. It is a Species of carnelian of a blood-red color, and was appropriated to the Tribe of Reuben.

• SARSENA

A pretended exposition of Freemasonry, published at Baumberg, Germany, in 1816, under the title of Sarsena, or the Perfect Architect, created a great sensation at the time among the initiated and the profane. It professed to contain the history of the origin of the Order, and the various opinions upon what it should be, "faithfully described by a true and perfect Brother, and extracted from the papers which he left behind him." Like all other expositions, it contained, as Gadicke remarks, very little that was true, and of that which was true nothing that had not been said before.

• SASH

An old regulation noted by Doctor Mackey on the subject of wearing sashes in a procession is in the following words: "None but officers, who must always be Master Masons, are permitted to wear sashes; and this decoration is only for particular officers." In the United States the wearing of the sash appears, very properly, to be confined to the Worshipful Master, as a distinctive badge of his office.

The sash is worn by the Companions of the Royal Arch Degree, and is of a scarlet color, with the words holiness to the Lord inscribed upon it. These were the words placed upon the miter of the High Priest of the Jews. In the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the white sash is a decoration of the Thirty-third Degree. A decree of the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction confined its use to honorary members, while active members wore the collar.

The sash, or scarf, is analogous to the Zennar, or sacred cord, which was placed upon the candidate in the initiation into the mysteries of India, and which every Brahman was compelled to wear. This cord was woven with great solemnity, and being put upon the left shoulder, passed over to the right side and hung down as low as the fingers could reach.

• SASKATCHEWAN

The Brethren of the Province of Saskatehewan assembled at Regina on the 10th day of August, 1906, and formally resolved themselves into the Grand Lodge of Saskatehewan. Twenty-five Lodges out of twenty-eight in the Province were represented. Brother H. H. Campkin was elected Grand Master and was installed by Brother McKenzie, Grand Master of Manitoba.

• SASTRA

One of the sacred books of the Hindu law.

• SAT B'HAI, ROYAL ORIENTAL ORDER OF THE

Said to have originated in India, and so named after a bird held sacred by the Hindus, whose flight, invariably in sevens, has obtained for the Society the appellation of the Seven Brethren, hence the name. It embosoms seven Degrees—Arch Censor, Arch Courier, Arch Minister, Arch Herald, Arch Scribe, Arch Auditor, and Arch Mute. It promises overmuch. The figure illustrated here is termed the Mystery of the Apex.

• SATRAP

The title given by the Greek writers to the Persian Governors of Provinces before Alexander's conquest. It is from the Persian word Satrab. The authorized version calls them the Kings Lieutenants; the Hebrew, achashdarpenim, which is doubtless a Persian word Hebraized. These were the Satraps who gave the Jews so much trouble in the rebuilding of the Temple. They are alluded to in the congeneric Degrees of Companion of the Red Cross and Prince of Jerusalem.

• SAVALETTE DE LANGES

Founder of the Rite of Philalethes at Paris, in 1773. He was also the President and moving spirit of the Masonic Congress at Paris, which met in 1785 and 1787 for the purpose of discussing many important points in reference to Freemasonry. The zeal and energy of Savalette de Langes had succeeded in collecting for the Lodge of the Philalethes a valuable cabinet of natural history and a library containing many manuscripts and documents of great importance. His death, which occurred soon after the beginning of the French Revolution and the political troubles that ensued, caused the dispersion of the members and the loss of a great part of the collection. The remnant subsequently came into the possession of the Lodges of Saint Alexander of Scotland, and of the Social Contract, which constituted the Philosophic Scottish Rite.

• SAXONY

The first Masonic Lodge in Saxony appeared at Dresden, in 1738; within four years thereafter two others had been established in Leipzig and Altenburg. The Grand Lodge was formed in 1811.

• SAYER, ANTHONY

At the Revival in 1717, "Mr. Antony Sayer, gentleman," was elected Grand Master (Constitutions, 1738, page 110). He was succeeded in the next year by George Payne, Esq. In 1719, he was appointed Senior Grand Warden by Grand Master Desaguliers. Afterward he fell into bad circumstances and in 1730 a sum of £15 was granted to him by Grand Lodge, followed by a further grant of £2.2.0 in 1741. In December, 1730, a complaint was made to Grand Lodge of some irregular conduct on his part, and he was acquitted of the charge, whatever it was, but told to do nothing so irregular for the future. When he died, either late in 1791 or early in 1742, he was Tiler of what is now the Old King's Arms Lodge, No. 28. A portrait of him by Highmore, the celebrated painter, is in existence, mezzotinto copies of which are not uncommon (see also a paper "Mr. Anthony Sayer, gentleman," by Brother J. Walters Hobbs, Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1924, volume xxxvii, page 218). The Freemason, June 6, 1925, says of Brother Sayer:

We also find the name among the worthies of the Old King's Arms Lodge, No. 28, London, England, the name of that somewhat elusive character, Anthony Sayer the first Grand Master of England, about whom less definite information is known than of any of his successors in that high office. After serving the office of Grand Master in 1717, he, like George Payne, descended, in 1719, to the Chair of Grand Warden.

His name appears among the lists of members of the Lodge which met at the Queen's Head in Knave's Acre, in Wardour Street, for the years 1723, 1725, and 1730, which Lodge stands as No. 11 on the Engraved List in the Library of Grand Lodge, and is now known as the Lodge of Fortitude and Old Cumbelland, No. 12. It is now known that he became Tyler of the Old King's Arms Lodge in 1733. It is also known that he received assistance from the Charity Fund of Grand Lodge in 1730 and again in 1741, and the Minute Books of the Old King's Arms Lodge reveal the fact that he received assistance from their funds in 1730 and 1740. According to a notice in the London Evening Post of January 16, 1742, ten days after the election of his successor of Tyler, he passed away a few days prior to that date, evidently in good Masonic order since the funeral cortege set out from the Shakespeare's Head Tavern, in Covent Garden, then the meeting-place of the Stewards' Lodge, followed by a great number of members of the Ancient and Honorable Society of Freemasons "of the best quality," the body being "decently interred in Covent Garden Church." According to the Church Register the funeral took place on January 5, 1742.

• SCALD MISERABLES

A name given to a set of persons who, in 1741, formed a mock procession in derision of the Freemasons. Sir John Hawkins, speaking (in his Life of Johnson, page 336) of Paul Whites head, says:

In concert with one Carey, a surgeon, he planned and exhibited a procession along the Strand of persons on foot and on horseback, dressed for the occasion, carrying mock ensigns at the Symbols of Freemasonry; the design of which wits to expose to laughter the insignia and ceremonies of that mysterious Institution; and it was not until thirty years afterward that the Fraternity recovered from the disgrace which so ludicrous a representation had brought on it.

The incorrectness of this last statement will be evident to all who are acquainted with the successful progress made by Freemasonry between the years 1741 and 1771, during which time Sir John Hawkins thinks that it was languishing under the blow dealt by the mock procession of the Scald Miserables. A better and fuller account is contained in the London Daily Post, March 20, 1741.

Yesterday, some mock Freemasons marched through Pall Mall and the Strand as far as Temple Bar in procession, first went fellows on jackasses, with cows' horns in their hands, then a kettlek rummer on a jackass having two butter firkins for kettle-drums; then followed two carts drawn by jackasses, having in them the stewards with several badges of their Order; then came a mourning-coach drawn by six horses, each of a different color and size, in which were the Grand Master and Wardens; the whole attended by a vast mob. They stayed without Temple Bar till the Masons came by, and paid their compliments to them, who returned the same with an agreeable humor that possibly disappointed the witty contriver of this mock Scene, whose misfortune is that, though he has some mit, his subjects are generally so ill chosen that he loses by it as many friends as other people of more judgment gain.

April 27th, being the day of the Annual Feast, a number of shoe-cleaners, chimney-sweepers, etc,. on foot and in carts, with ridiculous pageants carried before them, went in procession to Temple Bar, by way of jest on the Freemasons."

A few days afterward, says the same journal, "several of the Mock Masons were taken up by the constable empowered to impress men for his Majesty's service, and confined until they can be examined by the Justices." Hone remarks (Ancient Mysteries, page 242), it was very common to indulge in satirical pageants, which were accommodated to the amusement of the vulgar, and he mentions this procession as one of the kind. A plate of the mock procession has engraved by A. Benoist, a drawing-master, under the title of A Geometrical View of the Grated Procession of the Scald Miserable Masons, designed as they were drawn up over against Somerset House in the Strand, on the 27 th day of April Anno 1742. Of this plate there is a copy in Clavel's Histoire Pittoresque. With the original plate Benoist published a key, as follows, which perfectly agrees with the copy of the plate in Clavel:

1. The Grand Sword-Bearer, or Tyler, carrying the Sward of State, a present of Ishmael Ahiff to old Hvram Iting of the Saraeens, to his Graee of Wattin, Grand Master of the Holy Lodge of Saint John of Jorusalem ln Clerkenwell.

2. Tylers or Guarders.

3. Grand Chorus of Instruments.

4. She Stewards. in three Gutt-carts drawn by Asses.

5. Two famous Pillars.

6. Three great Lights: the Sun, Hibroglyphical, to rule the Day- the Moon, Enblematical, to rule the Night; a Master Mason, Political, to rule his Lodge.

7. The Entered Prentice's Token.

8. The letter G. famous in Masonry for differencing the Fellow Craft's Lodges from that of Prentices.

9. The Funeral of a Grand Master according to tho Rites of the Order. with the Fifteen loving brethren.

10. A Master Mason's Lodge.

11. Grand Band of Musiek.

12. Two Trophies; one being that of a Black-shoe Boy and a Sink Boy, the other that of a Chimney-Sweeper.

13. The Equipage of the Grand Master, all the Attendants wearing Mystical Jewells.

The historical mock procession of the Scald Miserables was, it thus appears, that which occurred on April 27, and not the preceding one of March 20, which may have been only a feeler, and having been well received by the populace there might have been an encouragement for its repetition. But it was not so popular with the higher classes, who felt a respect for Freemasonry, and were unwilling to see an indignity put upon it. A writer in the London Freemasons Magazine (1859 i, page 875) says: "The contrivers of the mock procession were at that time said to be Paul Whitehead, Esq., and his intimate friend (whose real Christian name was Esquire) Carey, of Pall Mall, surgeon to Frederick, Prince of Wales. The city officers did not suffer this procession to go through Temple Bar, the common report then being that its real interest was to affront the annual procession of the Freemasons. The Prince was so much offended at this piece of ridicule, that he immediately removed Carey from the office he held under him."

Captain George Smith (Use and Abuse of Freemasonry, page 78) says that "about this time (1742) an order was issued to discontinue all public processions on feast days, on account of a mock procession which had been planned, at a considerable expense, by some prejudiced persons, with a riew to ridicule these public cavalcades." Smith is not altogether accurate. There is no doubt that the ultimate effect of the mock procession was to put an end to what was called the March of Procession on the Feast Day, but that effect did not show itself until 1747, in which year it was resolved that it should in future be discontinued (see Constitutions, 1756, page 248. On the subject of these mock processions there is an article by Dr. W. J. Chetwode Crawley, Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xviu).

• SCALES, PAIR OF

"Let me be weighed in an even balance," said Job, "that God may know mine integrity"; and Solomon says that "a false balance is abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight." So we find that among the ancients a balanse, or pair of scales, was a well-known recognized symbol of a strict observation of justice and fair dealing. This symbolism is also recognized in Freemasonry, and hence in the Degree of Princes of Jerusalem, the duty of which is to administer justice in the inferior Degrees, a pair of scales is the most important symbol.

• SCALLOP-SHELL

The scallo pushed, the staff, and sandals form a part of the costume of a Masonic Knight Templar in his character as a Pilgrim Penitent. Shakespeare makes Ophelia sing—

And how shall I my true love know

From any other one?

O, by his scallop-shell and staff

And by his sandal shoon!

The scallop-shell was in the Middle Ages the recognized badge of a pilgrim; so much so, that Doctor Clarke (Travels ii, page 538) has been led to say: "It is not easy to amount for the origin of the shell as a badge worn by the pilgrims, but it decidedly refers to much earlier Oriental customs than the journeys of Christians to the Holy Land, and its history will probably be found in the mythology of eastern nations." He is right as to the question of antiquity, for the shell was an ancient symbol of the Syrian goddess Astarte, Venus Pelagia, or Venus rising from the sea.

But it is doubtful whether its use by pilgrims is to be traced to so old or so Pagan an authority. Strictly, the scallop-shell was the badge of pilgrims visiting the shrine of Saint James of Compostela, and hence it is called by naturalists the Pecten Jacobacus—the comb shell of Saint James. Fuller (Church History ii, page 228) says: "All pilgrims that visit Saint James of Compostela in Spain returned thence obsiti conchis, 'all beshelled about' on their clothes, as a religious denotive there bestowed upon them."

Pilgrims were, in fact, in medieval times distinguished by the peculiar badge which they wore, as designating the shrine which they had visited. Thus pilgrims from Rome wore the keys, those from Saint James the scallop-shell, and those from the Holy Land palm branches, whence such a pilgrim was some times called a palmer. But this distinction was not always rigidly adhered to, and pilgrims from Palestine frequently wore the shell. At first the shell was sewn on the cloak, but afterward transferred to the hat; and while, in the beginning, the badge was not assumed until the pilgrimage was accomplished, eventually pilgrims began to wear it as soon as they had taken their vow of pilgrimage, and before they had commenced their journey.

Both of these changes have been adopted in the Templar ceremonies. The pilgrim, although symbolically making his pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher in Palestine, adopts the shell more properly belonging to the pilgrimage to Compostela; and adopts it, too, not after his visit to the shrine, but as soon as he has assumed the character of a pilgrim, which, it will be seen from what has been said, is historically correct, and in accordance with the later practice of medieval pilgrims.

• SCARAB

From the Latin Scarabaeus, a beetle, the ancient Egyptian symbol usually combining representations of the sacred insect with a pellet suggesting the sun, the whole sacred to the sun-god. Sometimes the venerated beetle as a living soul is shown with outstretched wings or with the horned head of a ram. Scarabs often are inscribed with mottoes or other similar lettering.

• SCARLET

See Red

• SCENIC REPRESENTATIONS

In the Ancient Mysteries scenic representations were employed to illustrate the doctrines of the resurrection, which it was their object to inculcate. Thus the allegory of the initiation has more deeply impressed, by being brought vividly to the sight as well as to the mind of the aspirant. Thus, too, in the religious mysteries of the Middle Ages, the moral lessons of Scripture were dramatized for the benefit of the people who beheld them.

The Christian virtues and graces often assumed the form of personages in these religious plays, and fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice appeared before the spectators as living and acting beings, inculcating by their actions and by the plot of the drama those lessons which would not have been so well received or so thoroughly understood, if given merely in a didactic form. The advantage of these scenic representations, consecrated by antiquity and tested by long experience, is well exemplified in the ritual of the Third Degree of Freemasonry, where the dramatization of the great legend gives to the initiation a singular force and beauty. It is surprising therefore, that the English system never adopted, or if adopted, speedily discarded, the drama of the Third Degree, but gives only in the form of a narrative what the American system more wisely and more usefully presents by living action. Throughout the United States, in every State excepting Pennsylvania, the initiation into the Third Degree constitutes a scenic representation. The latter State preserves the didactic method of the English system. The ceremonies on the Continent of Europe pursue the same scenic form of initiation, and in Doctor Mackey's opinion it is therefore most probable that this was the ancient usage, and that the present English arrangement of this feature is of comparatively recent date (see Ritual).

• SCEPTER

An ensign of sovereign authority, and hence carried in several of the advanced Degrees by officers who represent kings.

• SCHAW MANUSCRIPT

This is a code of laws for the government of the Operative Seasons of Scotland, drawn up by William Schaw, the Master of the Work to James VI. It bears the following title: "The Statutis and Ordinanceis to be obseruit be all the Maister-Maissounis within this realme sett down be William Schaw, Maister of Wark to his Maieste and general Wardene of the said Craft, with the consent of the Maisteris efter specifeit."

As will be perceived by this title, it is in the Scottish dialect. It is written on paper, and dated XXVIII December, 1598, Although containing substantially the general regulations which are to be found in the English manuscripts, it differs materially from them in many particulars. Masters, Fellow Crafts, and Apprentices are spoken of, but simply as gradations of rank, not as Degrees, and the word Lodge or Lodge is constantly used to define the place of meeting.

The government of the Lodge was vested in the Warden, Deacons, and Masters, and these the Fellow-Crafts and Apprentices were to obey. The highest officer of the Craft is called the General Warden. The Manuscript is in possession of the Lodge of Edinburgh, but has several times been published—first in the Laws and Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, in 1848 then in the American edition of that work, published by Doctor Robert Morris, in the ninth volume of the Universal Masonic Library; afterward by W. A. Laurie, in 1859, in his History of Freemasonry and the Grand Lodge of Scotland; D. Murray Lyon in History of the Lodge of Edinburgh gives a transcript and the last part in facsimile, and, by W. J. Hughan, in his Unpublished Records of the Craft, and in Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasons the Scotch Manuscript has extended treatment in comparison with the various codes of English origin.

• SCHAW. WILLIAM

A name which is intimately connected with the history of Freemasonry in Scotland. For the particulars of his life, we are principally indebted to the writer, said to have been Sir David Brewster, Lylon's History of Lodge of Edinburgh, page 55, of Appendix Q. 2, in the Constitutions, 1848, of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. William Schaw was born in the year 1550, and was probably a son of Schaw of Sauchie, in the Shire of Clackmannon.

He appears from an early period of life to have been connected with the royal household. In proof of this we may refer to his signature attached to the original parchment deed of the National Covenant, which was signed by King James VI and his household at Holyrood Palace January 28,1580-1, old style. it not being until an Act of the Privy Council in Scotland, 1599, made January 1 New Year's Day, from 1600.

In 1581, Schaw became successor to Sir Robert Drummond of Carnock, as Master of Works. This high Official appointment placed under his superintendence all the royal buildings and palaces in Scotland; and in the Treasurer's accounts of a subsequent period various sums are entered as having been paid to him in connection with these buildings for improvements, repairs, and additions. Thus, in September, 1585, the sum of £315 was paid "to William Schaw, his Majestie's Maister of Wark, for the reparation and mending of the Castell of Striueling," and in May, 1590, £400, by his Majesty's precept, was "delyverit to William Sehaw, the Maister of Wark, for reparation of the house of Dumfermling, before the Queen's Majestic passing thereto."

Sir James Melville, in his Memoirs, mentions that, being appointed to receive the three Danish Ambassadors who came to Scotland in 1585, with overtures for an alliance with one of the daughters of Frederick II, he requested the King that two other persons might be joined with him, and for this purpose he named Schaw and James Meldrum, of Seggie, one of the Lords of Session. It further appears that Schaw Wad been employed in various missions to France. He accompanied James VI to Denmark in the winter of 1589, previous to the King's marriage with the Princess Anna of Denmark, which was celebrated at Upslo, in Norway, on the 23d of November. The King and his attendants remained during the winter season in Denmark, but Schaw returned to Scotland on the 16th of March, 1589-90, for the purpose of making the necessary arrangements for the reception of the wedding-party. Schaw brought with him a paper subscribed by the King, containing the "Order set down be his Majestic to be effectuate be his Hienes Secret Counsel, and prepared again his Majestic's return in Scotland," dated in February, 1589-90.

The King and his royal bride arrived in Leith on the 1st of May, and remained there six days, in a building called the King's Work, until the Palace of Holylood was prepared for their reception. Extensive alterations had evidently been made at this time at Holyrood, as a Warrant was issued by the Provost and Council of Edinburgh to deliver to William Schaw, Maister of Wark, the sum of £1000, "restante of the last taxation of £20,000" granted by the Royal Buroughs in Scotland, the sum to be expended "in biggin and repairing of this Hienes Palice of Halyrud-house, 14th March, 1589-90. Subsequent payments to Schaw occur in the Treasurer's accounts for broad scarlet cloth and other stuff for burde claythes and coverings to forms and windows bayth in the Kilk and Palace of Halyrud-house."

On this occasion various sums were also paid by a precept from the King for dresses, etc., to the ministers and others connected with the royal household. At this time William Schaw, Maister of Wark, received £133 6s. 8d. The Queen was crowned on the 17th of May, and two days following she made her first public entrance into Edinburgh. The inscription on Schaw's monument states that he was, in addition to his office of Master of the Works, Sacris ceremoniis praepositus and Reginae Quaestor, which Monteith has translated as Sacrist and Queen's Chamberlain. This appointment of Chamberlain evinces the high regard in which the Queen held him; but there can be no doubt that the former words relate to his holding the office of General Warden of the ceremonies of the Masonic Craft, an office analogous to that of Substitute Grand Master as now existing in the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

William Schaw died April 18, 1602, and was buried in the Abbey Church of Dunfermline, where a monument was erected to his memory by his grateful mistress, the Queen. On this monument is his name and monogram cut in a marble slab, which, tradition says, was executed by his own hand, and containing his Freemason's Mark, and an inscription in Latin, in which he is described as one imbued with every liberal art and science, most skillful in architecture, and in labors and business not only unwearied and indefatigable, but ever assiduous and energetic. No man appears, from the records, to have lived with more of the commendation, or died with more of the regret of others, than this old Scottish Freemason.

• SCHISMATIC

Thory (History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient) thus calls the Brethren who, expelled by the Grand Lodge of France, had formed in the year 1772, a rival Body under the name of the National Assembly. Any Body of Freemasons separating from the legal obedience, and establishing a new one not authorized by the laws of Freemasonry — such, for instance, as the Saint John's Grand Lodge in New York — is properly schismatic.

• SCHISMS

This, which was originally an ecclesiastical term, and signifies, as Milton defines it, "a rent or division in the church when it comes to the separating of congregations," is unfortunately not unknown in Masonic history. It is in Masonic, as in canon law, a withdrawing from recognized authority, and setting up some other authority in its place.

The first schism recorded after the revival of 1717, was that of the Duke of Wharton, who, in 1722, caused himself to be irregularly nominated and elected Grand Master. His ambition is assigned in the Book of Constitutions as the cause, and his authority was disowned "by all those," says Anderson, "that would not countenance irregularities." But the breach was healed by Strand Master Montague, who, resigning his claim to the chair, caused Wharton to be regularly elected and installed (see Constitutions, 1738, page 114).

The second schism in England was when Brother Preston and others in 1779 formed the Grand Lodge of England South of the River Trent owing to a dispute with the Grand Lodge of the Moderns, which continued for ten years (see Preston).

In France, although irregular Lodges began to be instituted as early as 1756, the first active schism is to be dated from 1761, when the dancing-master Lacorne, whom the respectable Freemasons refused to recognize as the substitute of De Clermont, the Grand Master, formed, with his adherents, an independent and rival Grand Lodge; the members of which, however, became reconciled to the legal Grand Lodge the next year, and again became schismatic in 1765. In fact, from 1761 until the organization of the Grand Orient in 1772, the history of Freemasonry in France is but a history of schisms.

But in Germany, in consequence of the Germanic principle of Masonic law that two or more controlling Bodies may exist at the same time and in the same place with concurrent and coextensive jurisdiction, it is legally impossible that there ever should be a schism. A Lodge or any number of Lodges may with draw from the parent stock and assume the standing and prerogatives of a mother Lodge with powers of constitution or an independent Grand Lodge, and its regularity would be indisputable, according to the German interpretation of the law of territorial jurisdiction. Such an act of withdrawal would be a secession, but not a schism.

On the other hand, in the United States of America, there have been several instances of Masonic schism. Thus, in Massachusetts, by the establishment in 1752 of the Saint Andrew's Grand Lodge; in South Carolina, by the formation of the Grand Lodge of York Masons in 1787; in Louisiana, in 1848, by the institution of the Grand Lodge of Ancient York Masons; and in New York, by the establishment in 1823 of the city and country Grand Lodges; and in 1849 by the formation of the Body known as the Philtp's Grand Lodge. In all of these instances a reconciliation eventually took place; nor is it probable that schisms will often occur, because the principle of exclusive territorial jurisdiction has been now so well settled and so universally recognized, that no seceding or Schismatic Body can expect to receive the countenance or support of any of the Grand Lodges of the Union.

There are these essential points of difference between ecclesiastical and Masonic schism; the former, once occurring, generally remains perpetual. Reconciliation with a parent church is seldom effected. The schisms of Calvin and Luther at the time of the Reformation led to the formation of the Protestant Churches, who can never be expected to unite with the Roman Church, from which they separated. The Quakers, the Baptists, the Methodists, and other sects which seceded from the Church of England, have formed permanent religious organizations, between whom and the parent body from which they separated there is a breach which will probably never be healed. But all Masonic schisms, as experience has shown, have been temporary in their duration, and sometimes very short-lived among sincere Brethren.

The spirit of Masonic Brotherhood which continues to pervade both parties, always leads, sooner or later, to a reconciliation and a reunion; concessions are mutually made, and compromises effected, by which the schismatic Body is again merged in the parent association from which it had seceded. Another difference is this, a religious Schismatic body is not necessarily an illegal one, nor does it always profess a. system of false doctrine. "A schism," says Milton "may happen to a true church, as well as to a false." But a Masonic schism is always illegal; it violates the law of exclusive jurisdiction; and a schismatic Body cannot be recognized as possessing any of the rights or prerogatives which belong alone to the supreme dogmatic Masonic power of the State.

• SCIENCES

The unknown author (possibly William Preston), or authors who wrote the Dionitorial Lectures of the Fellowcraft Degree used the Liberal Arts and Sciences as a symbol of the kind of education which grown men need, and which is represented by college and university; he gave the traditional list of them (see page 590 this Encyclopedia) which had been current in the Middle Ages: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy.

The extraordinary fact about this list is that though it is supposed to contain the sciences as well as the arts it includes only one science, astronomy, and does not include the fundamental sciences of physics and chemistry. The number of "arts" is equally incomplete, and equally confused. The list has no worth as a list of the subjects on the curriculum (and never did!) but it serves well enough as a symbol, or rather as an emblem, of education. It is unfortunate that in our Masonic literature the great number of commentators on the symbol have given their attention almost exclusively to the "arts" in the list, and almost none to the "sciences," because there is one whole side of Freemasonry and its history which comes under that head. Among the many things which we must have in order to keep alive are those which belong to the two sciences of physics and chemistry.

As organized sciences, carried on in laboratories by specialists, physics and chemistry are not many centuries old; but the materials used by them, and for sake of which the specialists work, have been used by men from the earliest beginnings because there never has been a way to have food, clothing, shelter, tools, weapons, and medicines without them. If by "science" is meant these materials instead of the specialists and their modern, technical methods, then science is as old as man, and the most primitive peoples had the sciences, just as at the present time tribes in the still uncivilized areas of the world have them, and always have.

There are thousands of things in the sciences, and new ones are evermore being discovered, and they differ widely among themselves; but they together have one property in common, that they can be found, used, worked on, and worked with, only by technical methods; and these techniques can be used on all of them.

First, the materials themselves are useless lentil made over or modified or manufactured, are very difficult to know and understand, or are poisonous, explosive, rare, costly, or dangerous—thus, sulphur may turn into a poison in ignorant hands, and ordinary cotton can turn into an explosive.

Second, the materials are such that units of them are interchangeable, so that what is true of any one is true for any other unit of the same material; it is because of this that physical and chemical formulas are possible.

Third, since the units are interchangeable (any gram of mercury can be used when "gram of mercury" is called for) the materials are mathematizable; and mathematics are so necessary, in fact, that without them there could be no science.

Fourth, the materials require technical treatment, Scientific instruments, and technical knowledge; guesswork is ruled out.

Fifth, the materials are used universally; salt, sulphur, mercury, steam, electricity, the pulley, the cog, force, weight, etc., are not only found and used everywhere but are made or manufactured everywhere by the same methods—the formula for sulphuric acid is the same in every country, and in every period of time.

Whatever the above is true of, belongs to science; if the above is not true of a thing it does not belong to science; since the only things of which it is true are the materials used in physics and chemistry and their sum divisions, they are the only sciences. If the Word "scientific" were used exclusively of the materials and methods of physics and chemistry it would clear up a mass of confusion in thought, especially in "popular " thought; if men, careless of accuracy in speech, insist upon using "scientific" for other fields and methods and materials the fact remains that physics and chemistry (with their subdivisions) remain unique, and stand apart, and do not admit of being mixed with anything else.

In countries and periods of time in Europe and America many names have been used for what is now called science, such as wisdom, philosophy, natural philosophy, etc.; the word "science" itself has had a similarly checkered history; it has meant at different times knowledge, dialectics, medicine, philosophy, ethics, etc. In the present stage of the English language it should be used exclusively of physics and chemistry.

Biology, botany, ethnology, zoology, etc. are Systems of Observation.

They are not sciences because their units are not interchangeable, and the units do not continue to maintain their identity without change—what is today an ounce of alcohol will next week be the same ounce of alcohol, but what is a seed today may be a plant next week an egg today will be a chicken in ten days. Mathematics, logic, statistics, etc., are Disciplines; they are composed of rigorously accurate formulas which must never vary (they are indifferent to the mathematician's feelings) and must be learned by heart. History, economics, sociology, psychology, etc., are subjects; each man working in them can work where he wishes, as much or as little as he wishes, for any purpose he desires, and can make use of any method he finds will work; they occupy "fields." Music, architecture, oratory, literature, drama, dancing, sculpture, etc., are Fine Arts. Pottery making, silver and gold work, engravings, carving, etc., belong to the Skilled Crafts. Theology, in its subdivisions, and philosophy, divided into its eight subdivisions, are together describable by no other word than Thought.

In addition there are a number of fields of study and endeavor which are sui generis, unique, and not to be classified; they cannot be described in terms of anything else but must be described in terms of themselves; scholarship is one, antiquarianism is another; Freemasonry itself belongs to this last category; it is not, as Dr. Hemming tried to have us believe, "a system"—scarcely anything could be less a system, but is merely itself, and In a rigorous use of words it would not be a tautology to define it as: "Freemasonry is freemasonry."

When Dr. Hemming defined Freemasonry as "a system of morality" he forgot or else he had never known, that ethics is a sub-division of philosophy, and is wholly unconnected, even remotely, with either of the two sciences. Like many commentators who have followed him he had no eye for anything in Freemasonry except the religion in it; this is especially true of American Masonic writers because from the time of the Rev. George Oliver they have written about that side of the Craft as if it were the only side it had. 'This has been a misfortune because it has given millions of American Masons a distorted, misshapen picture of Freemasonry, and because it has ignored the salient role of the sciences in Freemasonry from the first Operative Masonry until now. The Operative Freemasons had to know and use more science than any other men in the Middle Ages; they made tools, understood engineering and constructed engines such as elevators, cranes, etc., used chemicals in staining of glass, knew mechanics, and had to employ mathematics, geometry especially, at every step in their work. The sciences were forbidden; the populace dreaded them as something supernatural, or miraculous, and they believed that chemistry was of the devil because they had the superstition that hell is a place filled with living chemicals. The Freemasons ignored these notions; and though they kept their sciences to themselves they continued to use them against fulminations from either lords or bishops. This use of science was as much a part of Freemasonry as was either morality or brotherhood, and to omit it is to leave us with a falsified picture of the Operative Craft.

In the beginning of Speculative Fraternity under the Grand Lodge system the Masons avowed their devotion to the sciences more boldly, and even almost dramatically. The Royal Society was in the British public mind synonymous with science, and for more than a century it, and its offshoots, were the only exponents and practitioners of science in Britain.

It began in 1660 A.D. and took its first organized form at a meeting of scholars in Gresham College who had assembled to hear a lecture by Bro. Sir Christopher Wren. Sir Robert Moray was elected its first president, March 6, 1661 A.D. he is supposed to have been matte a Mason in 1640 A.D.

Dr. Desaguliers, who later became its secretary for a long period of years, was the "father of the Grand Lodge system," and was one of Sir Isaac Newton's closest friends.

A Lodge largely composed of Royal Society members met in a room belonging to the Royal Society Club in London. At a time when preachers thundered against these scientists, when newspapers thundered against them, street crowds hooted at them, and neither Oxford nor Cambridge would admit science courses, Masonic Lodges invited Royal Society members in for lectures, many of which were accompanied by scientific demonstrations; and it was these scientific lectures which became the pattern for the Monitorial Lectures of the next generation. The enthusiasm for science spread from England to France, and from there to Austria, and Russia; Masons and Lodges had an extraordinarily large and important part in spreading it. The fraternity had an historical justification as well as a symbolic need to set in the midst of the Fellowcraft degree (the Master Masons Degree at that time) the symbol of the Liberal Arts and it would rectify the general conception of Freemasonry and its history if Masonic writers were to cease to drop the and Sciences from that phrase.

(For references see any standard history of science. For the history of Masonry and the sciences see titles on Masonic history, etc., in the General Index to this supplement; in conjunction with them read histories of architecture. A work of especial usefulness to Masonic students is Books and Their Makers During the Middle Ages, by Geo. Haven Putnam; II Vol.; G. P. Putnam's Sons; New York; 1896. As one of the countless proofs that the Tomes of the Liberal Arts and Sciences were never taken at their face value Putnam cites De Artibus ac Disciplints Liberalium Litterarum, by Casidorus, in which that teacher of St. Benedict divides the "Mathematics" in the list into Astronomy, Arithmetic, Music, and Geometry. The book was written about 570 A.D.)

• SCHLEY, WINFIELD SCOTT

American Admiral, born October 9, 1839, and died in 1911. On July 3, 1898, Admiral Cervera's fleet was destroyed at Santiago by the American fleet under the command of Admiral Sampson and Admiral Schley. Admiral Schley was a Thirty-third Degree Freemason (see New Age, July, 1924).

• SCHNEIDER, JOHANN AUGUST

A zealous and learned Freemason of Altenburg, in Germany, where he was born May 22, 1755, and died August 13, 1816. Besides contributing many valuable articles to various Masonic journals, he was the compiler of the Constitutions such of the Lodge Archimedes zu den drei Reissbretten, or Archimedes of the Three Tracing-boards, at Altenburg, in which he had been initiated, and of which he was a member; an important but scarce work, containing a history of Freemasonry, and other valuable essays.

• SCHOOLS

None of the charities of Freemasonry have been more important or more worthy of approbation than those which have been directed to the establishment of schools for the education of the orphan children of Freemasons; and it is a very proud feature of the Order, that institutions of this kind are to be found in every country where Freemasonry has made a lodgment as an organized society.

In England, the Royal Freemasons Girls School was established in 1788. In 1798, a similar one for boys was founded. At a very early period charity schools were erected by the Lodges in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. The Freemasons of Holland instituted a school for the blind in 1808. In the United States much attention has been paid to this subject and particularly in the promotion of the Public Schools. In 1842, the Grand Lodge of Missouri instituted a Masonic college, and the example was followed by several other Grand Lodges. But colleges have been found too unwieldily and complicated in their management for a successful experiment, and the scheme has generally been abandoned. But there are numerous schools in the United States which are supported in whole or in part by Masonic Lodges.

• SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS

Doctor Oliver (Historical Landmarks ii, page 374) speaks of "the secret institution of the Naboom" as existing in the time of Solomon, and says they were established by Samuel "to counteract the progress of the Spurious Freemasonry which was introduced into Palestine before his time." This claim of a Masonic character for these institutions has been gratuitously assumed by the venerable author. He referred to the well-known Schools of the Prophets, which were first organized by Samuel, which lasted from his time to the closing of the canon of the Old Testament. They were scattered all over Palestine, and consisted of Scholars who devoted themselves to the study of both the written and the oral law, to the religious rites, and to the interpretation of Scripture. Their teaching of what they had learned was public, not secret, nor did they in any way resemble, as Doctor Oliver suggests, the Masonic Lodges of the later day. They were, in their organizational rather like our modern theological colleges, though their range of studies was very different.

• SCOR-LABAN

The Hebrew , the Latin Albus Bos, meaning White ox, or morally, Innocence or Candor. Sometimes written, as in the old French manuscripts, Charlaban. The name of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SCHREPFER, JOHANN GEORG

The keeper of a coffee-house in Leipsic, where, having obtained a quantity of Masonic, Rosierucian, and magical books, he opened, in 1768, what he called a Scottish Lodge, and pretended that he had been commissioned by Masonic superiors to destroy the system of Strict Observance, whose adherents he abused and openly insulted. He boasted that he alone possessed the great secret of Freemasonry, and that nearly all the German Freemasons were utterly ignorant of anything about it except its external forms. He declared that he was an Anointed Priest, having power over spirits, who were compelled to appear at his will and obey his commands, by which means he became acquainted not only with the past and the present, but even faith the future.

It was in thus pretending to evoke spirits that his freemasonry principally consisted. Many persons became his dupes; and although they soon discovered the imposture, shame at being themselves deceived prevented them from revealing the truth to others, and thus his initiations continued for a considerable period, and he was enabled to make some money, the only real object of his system. He has himself asserted, in a letter to a Prussian clergyman, that he was an emissary of the Jesuits; but of the truth of this we nave only his own unreliable testimony. He left Leipsic at one time and traveled abroad, leaving his Deputy to act for him during his absence. On his return he asserted that he was the natural son of one of the French princes, and assumed the title of Baron Von Steinbach.

But at length there was an end to his practices of jugglery. Seeing that he was beginning to be detected, fearing exposure, and embarrassed by debt, he invited some of his disciples to accompany him to a wood near Leipsic called the Rosenthal, where, on the morning of October 8, 1774, having retired to a little distance from the crowd, he blew out his brains with a pistol Clavel has thought it worth while to preserve the memory of this incident by inserting an engraving representing the scene in his Histoire Pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie (page 183). Schrepfer had much low cunning but was devoid of education. Lenning sums up his character in saying that he was one of the coarsest and most impudent swindlers who ever chose the Masorlic Brotherhood for his stage of action.

• SCHROEDER, FRIEDRICH JOSEPH WILHELM

A. Doctor and Professor of Pharmacology in Marburg; was born at Bielefeld, in Prussia, March 19, 1733, and died October 27, 1778. Of an infirm constitution from his youth, he still further impaired his bodily health and his mental faculties by his devotion to chemic, alchemical, and theosophic pursuits. He established at Marburg, in 1766, a Chapter of True and Ancient Rose Croix Masons, and in 1779 he organized in a Lodge of Sarreburg a School or Rite founded on Magic, Theosophy, and Alchemy, which consisted of seven Degrees, four advanced Degrees founded on these occult sciences being separated to the original three Symbolic Degrees. This Rite, called the Rectifed Rose Croix, was only practiced by two Lodges under the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of Hamburg, Clavel (Histoire Pittoresque, or Picturesque second step of the Mystic Ladder of Kadosh of the History, page 183) calls him the Cagliostro of Germany, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite because it was in his school that the Italian charlatan learned his first lessons of magic and theosophy. Doctor Oliver, misunderstanding Clavel, styles him an adventurer (Historical Landmarks ii, page 710).

But it is perhaps more just that ne should attribute to him a diseased imagination and misdirected studies than a had heart or impure practices. He must not he confounded with Fried. Ludwig Schroeder, who was a man of a very different character.

• SCHROEDER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG

An actor and a dramatic and Masonic writer, born at Schwerin, November 3, 1744, and died near Hamburg, September 3, 1816. He commenced life as an actor at Vienna, and was so distinguished in his profession that Hoffmann says "he was incontestably the greatest actor that Germany ever had, and equally eminent in tragedy and comedy." As an active, zealous Freemason, he acquired a high character. Bode himself, a well-known Freemason, was his intimate friend. Through his influence, he was initiated into Freemasonry, in 1774, in the Lodge Emanuel zur Maienblume. He soon after, himself, established a new Lodge working in the system of Zinnendorf, but which did not long remain in existence. Schroeder then went to Vienna, where he remained until 1785, when he returned to Hamburg. On his return, he was elected by his old friends the Master of the Lodge Emanuel, which office he retained until 1799.

In 1794 he was elected Deputy Grand Master of the English Provincial Grand Lodge of Lower Saxony, and in 1814, in the seventieth year of his life, he was induced to accept the Grand Mastership.

It was after his election, in 1787, as Master of the Lodge Emanuel at Hamburg, that he first resolved to devote himself to a thorough reformation of the Masonic system, which had been much corrupted on the continent by the invention of almost innumerable advanced Degrees, many of which found their origin in the fantasies often credited to Alchemy, Rosierucianism, and Hermetic Philosophy. It is to this resolution, thoroughly executed, that we owe the Masonic scheme known as Schroeder's Rite, which, whatever may be its defects in the estimation of others, has become very popular among many German Freemasons. He started out with the theory that, as Freemasonry had proceeded from England to the Continent, in the English Book of Constitutions and the Primitive English Ritual we must look for the pure unadulterated fountain of Freemasonry. He accordingly selected the well-known English Exposition entitled Jachim and Boaz as presenting, in his opinion, the best formula of the old initiation. He therefore translated it into the German language, and, remodeling it, presented it to the Provincial Grand Lodge in 1801, by whom it was accepted and established. It was soon after accepted by many other German Lodges on account of its simplicity. The system of Schroeder thus adopted consisted of the three Degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry, all the higher Degrees being rejected. But Schroeder found it necessary to enlarge his system, so as to give to Brethren who desired it an opportunity of further investigation into the philosophy of Masonry. He, therefore, established an England, or Select Historical Union, which should be composed entirely of Master Masons, who were to be engaged in the study of the different systems and Degrees of Freemasonry. The Hamburg Lodges constituted the Mutterbund, or Central Body, to which all the other Lodges were to be united by correspondence.

Of this system, the error seems to be that, by going back to a primitive ritual, which recognizes nothing higher than the Master's Degree, it rejects all the developments that have resulted from the labors of the philosophic minds of a century. Doubtless in the sol advanced degrees of the eighteenth century there was an abundance of chaff, but there was also much nourishing wheat. Schroeder, with the former, has thrown away the latter. He has committed the logical blunder of arguing from the abuse against the use. His system, however, has some merit, and is still practiced by the Grand Lodge of Hamburg.

• SCHROEDER'S RITE

See Schroeder, Friedrich Joseph Wilhelm

• SCHROEDER'S SYSTEM

See Schroeder, Friedrich Ludwig

• SCHULTZ, EDWARD T

Born August 23, 1827; died March 11, 1913, at Baltimore, Maryland. Initiated on June 3, 1854, in Concordia Lodge No. 13, and for five years was elected Master. He became Senior Grand Warden of Maryland in 1884. From 1880 to 1887 he was engaged upon an authoritative work, The History of Freemasonry in Maryland. For twenty-six years he wrote the reports on Foreign Correspondence of the Grand Lodge of Maryland and for thirty-six years also prepared similar reports for the Grand Chapter of his State. He was totally blind for more than fifteen years and his industry and sacrifice in bringing to a successful issue his many literary labors were truly splendid achievements.

• SCIENCES, LIBERAL

See Liberal Arts and Sciences

• SCIENTIFIC MASONIC ASSOCIATION

The German title is Scientifischer Freimaurer Bund. A society founded in 1803 by Fessler, Mossdorf, Fischer, and other distinguished Freemasons, the object being, by the united efforts of its members, to draw up, with the greatest accuracy and care, and from the most authentic sources, a full and complete history of Freemasonry, of its origin and objects, from its first formation to the present day, and also of the various systems or methods of working that have been introduced into the Craft. Such history, together with the evidence upon which it was founded, was to be communicated to worthy and zealous Brethren The members had no peculiar ritual, clothing, or ceremonies; neither were they subjected to any fresh obligation; every just and upright Freemason who had received a liberal education, who was capable of feeling the truth, and desirous of investigating the mysteries of the Order, could become a member of this Society, provided the ballot was unanimous, let him belong to what Grand Lodge he might. But those whose education had not been sufficiently liberal to enable them to assist in those researches were only permitted to attend the meetings as trusty Brethren to receive instruction.

• SCORPION

A genus of Arachnida, of numerous species, with an elongated body, but no marked division between the thorax and abdomen. Those of the south of Europe and on the borders of the Mediterranean have six eyes. This reptile, dreaded by the Egyptian, was sacred to the goddess Selk, and was solemnly cursed in all temples once a year.

• SCOTLAND

The tradition of the Scotch Freemasons is that Freemasonry was introduced into Scotland by the architects who built the Abbey of Kil winning; and the village of that name bears, therefore, the same relation to Scotch Freemasonry that the city of York does to English. "That Freemasonry was introduced into Scotland," says Laurie ( History, page 89) "by those architects who built the Abbey of Kilwinning, is manifest not only from those authentic documents by which the Kilwinning Lodge has been traced back as far as the end of the fifteenth century, but by other collateral arguments which amount almost to a demonstration."

In Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, the same statement is made in the following words: "A number of Freemasons came from the Continent to build a monastery there, and with them an architect or Master Mason to superintend and carry on the work. This architect resided at Kilwinning, and being a good and true Mason, intimately acquainted with all the arts and parts of Masonry known on the continent, was chosen Master of the meetings of the Brethren all over Scotland. He gave rules for the conduct of the Brethren at these meetings and decided finally in appeals from all the other meetings or Lodges in Scotland." His statement amounts to about this: that the Brethren assembled at Kilwinning elected a Grand Master, as we should now call him, for Scotland, and that the Lodge of Kilwinning be came the Mother Lodge, a title which it has always assumed. Manuscripts preserved in the Advocates Library of Edinburgh, which were first published by Laurie, furnish further records of the early progress of Freemasonry in Scotland.

It is said that in the reign of James II, the office of Grand Patron of Scotland was granted to William Saint Clair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness and Baroll of Roslin, "his heirs and Successors," by the King's Charter. But, in 1736, the Saint Clair who then exercised the Grand Mastership, "taking into consideration that his holding or claiming any such jurisdictions right, or privilege might be prejudicial to the Craft and vocation of Masonry," renounced his claims, and empowered the Freemasons to choose their Grand Master. The consequence of this act of resignation was the immediate organization of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, over whom, for obvious reasons, the hereditary Grand Master or Patron was unanimously called to preside.

Brother A. M. Mackey, Past Master and Historian, Lodge Saint David sends us this information of old customs. In the early days of "Canongate Kilwing from Leith," now Lodge Saint David, Edinburg, number 36, it was the usual custom to confer Degrees at Special or Emergency Meetings, and to reserve the Monthly Meetings for the transaction of ordinary business and—more especially—for the reception and entertainment of Deputations from the Sister Lodges in and about the town. On these occasions the evening was devoted to "Harmony." The following Minute of the Monthly Meeting held in April 1740 is not only typical of others of the period, but is also of more than usual interest in the references it contains to matters Masonic and Military:

Canongate Killlvinning from Leith 9th April 1740.

Year of Masonry 5740.

The Right Worshipful being necessary absent, The Senior Warden Brother Collin Mitchell assumed the Chair. Brother Calender appointed Senior Warden, Brother Aitkine Junior Warden, Then the Lodge being met and duly formed conform to adjournment Wee were upon this occasion Visited from the following Lodges, from Leith Killwinning by Brother Dickson, from Canongate Leith, Leith and Canongate by Br Hall and Brother Smith. It was moved by Brother Aitkine, Junior Warden pro tempore that Brother David Buchanan his health should be drunk, whom wee had in the last Mondays news to have been the man who first got in at the Iron port of Portobelo when taken, and did place the British Collours there, which was unanimously agreed to by the Lodge, and his health drunk with three Claps and three Hussa's. Thereafter the Right Worshipful toasted and drunk the uses wall healths upon this occasion, and the Lodge was closed by their proper officers, and adjourned till the fourteen day of May One thousand Seven hundred and forty years. ARCH SMART. Master

COLLIN MITCHELL S:W:

The episode referred to in the Minute is obviously an incident in the war declared in October 1739, between the forces of George II, and of Philip V of Spain. In those days news necessarily traveled slowly, and it was only on March 13, 1740, that word reached England of a victory achieved in the previous November.

Additional interest attaches to the Minute quoted in respect that it acquaints us with the form in toast drinking which obtained in the Lodge. The "three Claps and three Hussa's" constitute the earliest known record in Scottish Freemasonry of a custom which bears a curious resemblance to a form of "Masonic Firing" not unknown to the Fraternity at the present time (see also Squaremen, Corporation of).

• SCOTLAND, ROYAL ORDER OF

See Royal Order of Scotland

• SCOTT, CAPTAIN ROBERT FALCON

Explorer, born 1868 at Outlands, Devenport, England. Initiated into Freemasonry at the beginning of the twentieth century in Drury Lane Lodge, No. 2127, London, England, and received his Master Mason Degree in Saint Alban's Lodge, Christchurch, New Zealand, on his return from the National Antarctic expedition of 1901-4 which he commanded. In 1910 he headed the British Antarctic Expedition and reached the South Pole on January 18, 1912. Brother Scott and the four men who accompanied him perished on the return trip (see Drury Lane Lodge, No. 2127, Its Founding and Record from 1886 to 1918, by E. T. Pryor, page 5).

• SCOTT, CHARLES

American author of The Analogy of Ancient Craft Masonry to Natural and Revealed Religion, 1850, and The Keystone of the Masonic Arch; a Commentary on the Universal Laws and Principles of Ancient Masonry, 1856.

• SCOTT, JONATHAN

Published Pocket Companion and History of Freemasonry, 1754, London.

• SCOTT, WALTER

Famous novelist and poet. Initiated at thirty years of age. Born at the College Wynd, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 15, 1771, and educated at the High School. Previous to entering the University in November, 1783 he spent some weeks at Kelso attending daily the Public Schools At fifteen he was indentured an apprentice to his father, an attorney. On December 16, 1799, he was appointed to the Sheriffdom of Selkirkshire. At an emergency meeting held on Monday, March 2, 1801, Walter Scott was Initiated, Passed and Raised in Lodge Saint David, No. 36, Edinburgh. The father and the son of Brother Scott were Freemasons, the former Initiated in Lodge Saint David, January, 1754, the latter in Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, November 29, 1826.

June 4, 1816, Scott, in the presence of the Provincial Grand Master of the district, the most Noble the Marquis of Lothian, laid the foundation of a new Lodge-room at Selkirk and was elected and Honorary Member of the Lodge there, Saint John, now No. 32, on the Grand Lodge roll. Scott was announced as a Baronet in the Gazette on April 1, 1820, the first Baronet made by King George IV. The reference to the Oblong Square of the tournament field in his romance Ivanhoe is familiar, and the Lay of the Last Minstrel by Scott is inscribed to the Earl of Dalkeith, a member of the same Lodge and then Grand Master. Scott was in 1823 offered the Grand Mastership of the Royal Grand Conclave of Knights Templar of Scotland.

He declined because of his "age and health not permitting me to undertake the duties which whether convivial or charitable, a person undertaking such an office ought to be in readiness to perform when called upon." His reasons are all she more impressive when referred to his noble diligence in satisfying a debt not wholly his own, a labor that surely shortened his life.

The failure of the printing house of Ballentyne & Company occurred in 1826. Scott's liabilities as a partner amounted to nearly 150,000 pounds. Determined that all his creditors should be paid, he refused to be a party to a compromise or to accept any discharge. He pledged himself to devote the whole labor of his subsequent life to the payment of his debts and he fulfilled this promise. In the course of four years his literary works yielded nearly 70,000 pounds and ultimately his creditors received every penny of their claims. He paid, indeed. In February, 1830, he had an apoplectic seizure and never thoroughly recovered. After another severe shock in April, 1831, he was persuaded to abandon literary work. He died at Abbotsford, on September 21, 1832, in his sixty-second year. Five days later the remains of Sir Walter Scott were laid in the sepulcher of his ancestors in the old Abbey of Dryburgh. (These details furnished by the late Brother A. M. Mackay, Past Master, Lodge Saint David. See also Treasury of Masonic Thought, George M. Martin-John W. Callaghan, 1924, page 93.)

• SCOTTISH

We are accustomed to use indiscriminately the word Scotch or Scottish to signify something relating to Scotland. Thus we say the Scotch Rite or the Scottish Rite; the latter is, how ever, more frequently used by Masonic writers. This has been objected to by some purists because the final syllable ish has in general the signification of diminution or approximation, as in brackish, saltish, and similar words. But ish in Scottish is not a sign of diminution, but is derived, as in English, Danish, Swedish, etc., from the German termination ische. The word is used by the best writers.

• SCOTTISH DEGREES

The advanced Degrees so frequently credited to Ramsay, under the name of the Irish Degrees, were subsequently called Scottish Degrees in reference to that theory of the promulgation of Freemasonry derived from Scotland (see Irish Chapters).

• SCOTTISH PROV. C. L'S

The history of the Scottish Provincial Grand Lodge constituted in Boston with Joseph Warren as first Grand Masterand of his jurisdiction over certain Lodges in and around Boston for 100 miles, has been written many times, and has made the names of Boston's St. Andrews Lodge and of Joseph Warren and Paul Revere famous throughout Freemasonry. Warren was installed Provincial Grand Master in it in 1769.

(NOTE.— on page 322, Vol. 5, of Gould's History of Freemasonry, it is stated that when Jeremy Gridley, Grand Master of St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, died in 1767, he "was Grand Master of Masons in North America." He had no jurisdiction over Antient or Scottish Lodges in Boston. There were at the same time other Grand Masters in America; also Gridley was only a Provincial Grand Master. Antient, Irish, and Seottish Warrants had as much validity in America as did Warrantc from the Modern Grand Lodge of EnRland. There was no exclusive territorial jurisdiction in America until after the Revolution.)

For a reason difficult to explain a second Provincial Grand Lodge of Scotland, set up at about the same time, has been to an opposite extent almost wholly forgotten. Florida had been a Spanish Colony since 1512 (Ponce de Leon) and set up its capital at St. Augustine in 1565. In 1763 it was ceded to England. Then it was ceded back to Spain. It was won by the United States in 1822, and became a Territory in 1822, a State in 1845. On March 15, 1768, during British control, James Grant, Governor of East Florida, and Henry Cunningham, Past Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, "craved a Charter" from that Grand Lodge for a Lodge and for a Provincial Grand Lodge. Scotland granted the Charter and commissioned Grant as Provincial Grand Master.

In this wise came into existence Grant's East Florida Lodge, No. 143, "on the Scottish register," at St. Augustine. Grant's title was: "Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge over the Lodges of the Southern District of North America." The wording sounds as if the Grand Lodge of Scotland planned at that date to have two Provincial Grand Lodges in America; a Northern District, with its center at Boston; a southern one with its center temporarily in Florida. Scottish Lodges were regular and legitimate, were so recognized by both Grand Lodges in England, and there is nothing in any of the original documents or in the practices of Scottish American Lodges to indicate that they owed any allegiance to the St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts (see note above) or to any other Masonic authority.

This new Provincial Grand Lodge issued Warrants; how many, is not known, but records exist to show that it constituted a regimental Lodge, St. Andrews, No. 1, at Pensacola, in 1771; and another regimental Lodge, Mt. Moriah, at St. Lucia, in 1779.

In 1783 Britain gave Florida back to Spain, and the Dominican priests immediately drove Masonry out of it. St. .indrew's No. 1 moved up to Charleston, S. C., worked under a temporary dispensation, and was rechartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania as Lodge No. 40 in 1783. In 1787 it helped to form the Grand Lodge of South Carolina.

• SCOTTISH MASTER

See Ecossais

• SCOTTISH RITE

Some authorities call this the Ancient and Accepted Rite, but as the Latin Constitutions of the Order designate it as the Antiquus Scoticus Ritus Acceptus, or the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, that title has now been very generally adopted as the correct name of the Rite.

Although one of the youngest of the Masonic Rites, having been established not earlier than the year 1801, it is at this day most popular and the most extensively diffused. Supreme Councils or governing Bodies of the Rite are to be found in almost every civilized country of the world, and in many of them it is the only Masonic Obedience. The history of its organization is briefly this: In 1758, a Body was organized at Paris called the Council of Emperors of the East and West. This Council organized a Rite called the Rite of Perfection, which consisted of twenty-five Degrees, the highest of which was Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.

In 1761, this Council granted a Patent or Deputation to Stephen Morin, authorizing him to propagate the Rite in the Western Continent, whither he was about to repair. In the same year, Morin arrived at the City of Santo Domingo, where he commenced the dissemination of the Rite, and appointed many Inspectors, both for the West Indies and for the United States. Among others, he conferred the Degrees on Moses M. Hayes, with a power of appoint ing others when necessary. Hayes accordingly appointed Isaac Da Costa Deputy Inspector-General for South Carolina, who in 1783 introduced the Rite into that State by the establishment of a Grand Lodge of Perfection in Charleston. Other Inspectors were subsequently appointed, and in 1801 a Supreme Council lvas opened in Charleston by John Mitchell and Frederick Dalcho.

There is abundant evidence in the Archives of the Supreme Council that up to that time the twenty-five Degrees of the Rite of Perfeetion were alone recognized. But suddenly, vith the organization of the Supreme Council, there arose a new Rite, fabricated by the adoption of eight more of the continental advanced Degrees, so as to make the Thirty-third and not the Twenty-fifth Degree the summit of the Rite.

The Rite consists of thirty-three Degrees, which are divided into six sections, each section being under an appropriate Jurisdiction, and are as follows:

I. SYMBOLIC LODGE

1. Entered Apprentice

2. Fellow Craft

3. Master Mason

These are sometimes called the Blue or Symbolic Degrees. They are not conferred by the Scottish Rite in England, Scotland, Ireland, or in the United States because the Supreme Councils refrain from exercising jurisdiction through respect to the older authority in those countries of the York and American Rite.

II. LODGE OF PERFECTION

4. Secret Master

5. Perfect Master

6. Intimate Seeretary

7. Provost and Judge

8. Intendant of the Building

9. Elu, or Elected Knight, of the Nine

10. Illustrious Elect, or Elu, of the Fifteen

11. Sublime Knight Elect, or Elu, of the Twelve

12. Grand Master Architect

13. Knight of the Ninth Areh, or Royal Arch of Solomon

14. Grand Elect, Perfeet and Sublime Mason or

III. CHAPTER OF ROSE CROIX

15. Knight of the East

16. Prince of Jerusalem

17. Knight of the East and West

18. Prince Rose Croix

IV. COUNCIL OF KADOSH

19. Grand Pontiff

20. Grand Master of Symbolic Lodges

21. Noachite, or Prussian Knight

22. Knight of the Royal Ax, or Prince of

23. Chief of the Tabernacle

24. Prince of the Tabernacle

25. Knight of the Brazen Serpent

26. Prince of Mercy

27. Knight Commander of the Temple

28. Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept

29. Grand Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew

30. Knight Kadosh

V. CONSISTORY OF SUBLIME PRINCES OR MASTERS, OF THE ROYAL SECRET

31. Inspector Inquisitor Commander

32. Sublime Princo of the Roya1 Secrets VI

SUPREME COUNCIL

33. Sovereign Grand Inspector-General

The classification of the above Degrees is as they are arranged in the Southern Jurisdiction. In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction the Consistory grades begin at Grand Pontiff, the nineteenth, and include the thirty-second, Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, and the Council of Princes of Jerusalem governs the fifteenth and sixteenth grades Several of the titles of the Degrees vary in their use by the Supreme Councils but the above table covers most of these variations. The Southern Jurisdiction for example omits the word Grand from the names of the twelfth, fourteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-ninth grades, and also uses Elu instead of the other designations, omits Commander from the thirty-first, and specifies Master in the thirty-second.

A full account of the Rite is in Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry but numerous details under individual headings are in the present work (see Educational Foundalions).

• SCOTTISH RITE SCHOLARSHIPS

See Educational Foundations

• SCOTTISH TEMPLARS

See Templars of Scotland

• SCOTTISH TRINITARIANS

See Prince of Mercy

• SCRIBE

The Scribe is the third officer in a Royal Arch Chapters according to the American system and is the representative of Haggai. The Sofer, or Seribe in the earlier Scriptures, was a kind of military secretary; but in the latter he was a learned man, and Doctor of the Laws, who expounded them to the people. Thus Artaverres calls Ezra the priest, "a Scribe of the law of the God of heaven." Horne says that the Scribe was the King's Secretary of State, who registered all acts and decrees. It is in this sense that Haggai is called the Scribe in Royal Arch Masonry. In the English system of Royal Arch Masonry there are two Scribes, who represent Ezra and Nehemiah, and whose position and duties are those of Secretaries.

The American Scribe is the Third Principal. The Scribes, according to the English system, appear to be analogous to the Soferim or Scribes of the later Hebrews from the time of Ezra. These were members of the Great Synod, and were literary men, who occupied themselves in the preservation of the letter of the Scriptures and the development of its spirit.

• SCRIPTURES, BELIEF IN THE

The Grand Lodge of Ohio resolved in 1820, that "in the first degrees of Masonry religious tests shall not be a barrier to the admission or advancement of applicants, provided they profess a belief in God and His Holy Word"; and in 1854 the same Body adopted a resolution declaring that "Masonry, as we have received it from our fathers, teaches the Divine Authenticity of the Holy Scriptures." In 1845, the Grand Lodge of Illinois declared a belief in the authenticity of the Scriptures a necessary qualification for initiation. Although in Christendom very few Freemasons deny the Divine authority of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, yet to require, as a preliminary to initiation, the declaration of such a belief, Doctor Mackey was of opinion, is directly in opposition to the express regulations of the Order, which demand a belief in God and, by implication, in the immortality of the soul as the only religious tests (see Bible).

• SCRIPTURES, READING OF THE

By an ancient usage of the Craft, the Book of the Law is always spread open in the Lodge. There is in this, as in everything else that is Masonic, an appropriate symbolism. The Book of the Law is the Great Light of Freemasonry. To close it would be to intercept the rays of divine light which emanate from it, and hence it is spread open, to indicate that the Lodge is not in darkness, but under the influence of its illuminating power. Freemasons in this respect obey the suggestion of the Divine Founder of the Christian religion, "Neither do men light a Candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house."

A closed book, a sealed book, indicates that its contents are secret; and a ,book or roll folded up was the symbol, says Wemyss, of a law abrogated, or of a thing of no further use. Hence, as the reverse of all this, the Book of the Law is opened in our Lodges, to teach us that its contents are to be studied, that the laxv which it ineuleates is still in force, and is to be "the rule and guide of our conduct."

But the Book of the Law is not opened at random. In each Degree there are appropriate passages, whose allusion to the design of the Degree, or to some part of its ritual, makes it expedient that the book should be opened upon those passages. Masonic usage has not always been constant, nor is it now universal in relation to what particular passages shall be unfolded in each Degree. The custom in the United States of America, at least since the publication of Webb's Monitor, has been fairly uniform, and in general is as follows:

In the First Degree the Bible is opened at Psalm cxxxiii, an eloquent description of the beauty of brotherly love, and hence most appropriate as the illustration of a society whose existence is dependent on that noble principle. In the Second Degree the passage adopted is Amos vii, 7 and 8, in which the allusion is evidently to the plumb line, an important emblem of that Degree. In the Third Degree the Bible is opened at Ecclesiastes xii, 1-7, in which the description of old age and death is appropriately applied to the sacred object of this Degree.

But, as has been said, the choice of these passages has not always been the same. At different periods various passages have been selected, but always with great appropriateness, as may be seen from the following brief sketch. Formerly, the Book of the Law was opened in the First Degree at the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, which gives an account of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaae.

As this event constituted the first grand offering commemorated by our ancient Brethren, by which the ground floor of the Apprentice's Lodge was consecrated, it seems to have been very appropriately selected as the passage for this Degree. That part of the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis which records the vision of Jacob's ladder was also, with equal appositeness, selected as the passage for the First Degree. The following passage from First Kings vi, 8, was, during one part of the eighteenth century, used in the Second Degree: "The door of the middle chamber was in the right side of the house, and they went up with grinding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third." The appositeness of this passage to the Fellow Craft's Degree will hardly be disputed.

At another time the following passage from Second Chronicles iii, 17, was selected for the Second Degree its appropriateness will be equally evident: "And he reared up the pillars before the Temple, one on the right hand, and the other on the left; and he called the name of that on the right hand Jachin, and the name of that on the left Boaz."

The words of Amos v, 25 and 26, were sometimes adopted as the passage for the Third Degree: "Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves." The allusions in this paragraph are not so evident as the others. They refer to historical matters, which were once embodied in the ancient lectures of Freemasonry. In them the sacrifices of the Israelites to Moloch were fully described, and a tradition, belonging to the Third Degree, informs us that Hiram Abif did much to extirpate this idolatrous worship from the religious system of Tyre.

The sixth chapter of Second Chronicles, which contains the prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, was also used at one time for the Third Degree. Perhaps, however, this was with less fitness than any other of the passages quoted, since the events commemorated in the Third Degree took place at a somewhat earlier period than the dedication. Such a passage might more appropriately be annexed to the ceremonies of the Most Excellent Master as practiced in the United States.

At present the usage in England differs in respect to the choice of passages from that adopted in the United States of America. There the Bible is opened, in the First Degree, at Ruth iv, 7: "Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbor: and this was a testimony in Israel."

In the Second Degree the passage is opened at Judges xii, 6: "Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth; for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan. And there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. " Let not the reader hastily assume that there is but one meaning to be given these figures. The suggestion is offered that the reference may be taken as readily for two thousand and forty as forty-two thousand. We must not overlook the probable size of the population nor for that matter, the tendency in the East for exuberance of expression.

In the Third Degree the passage is opened at First Kings vii, 13 and 14: "And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a widow's son of the Tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass. And he came to King Solomon, and wrought all his work." While from the force of habit, as well as from the extrinsic excellence of the passages themselves, the American Freemason will, perhaps, prefer the selections made in the Lodges of the United States, especially for the First and Third Degrees, he at the same time will not fail to admire the taste and ingenuity of the English Brethren in the selections that they have made. In the Second Degree the passage from Judges is undoubtedly preferable to that used in the United States. In conclusion it may be observed, that to give these passages their due Masonic importance it is essential that they should be covered by the Square and Compasses. The Bible, square, and compasses are significant symbols of Freemasonry. They are said to allude to the peculiar characteristics of our ancient Grand Masters. The Bible is emblematic of the wisdom of King Solomon; the Square, of the power of Hiram; and the Compasses, of the skill of the Chief Builder. Some Masonic writers have still further spiritualized these symbols by supposing them to symbolize the wisdom, truth, and justice of the Great Architect of the Universe. In any view they become instructive and inseparably connected portions of the true Masonic Ritual, which, to be under stood, must be studied together (see Bible).

• SCROLL

The written portion of the Jewish Law read at stated periods before the congregation, and preserved in the Synagogue Witty great security.

• SCYTHE

In the classic mythology, the scythe was one of the attributes of Saturn, the god of time because that deity is said to have taught men the use of the implement in agriculture. But Saturn was also the god of time; and in modern iconography Time is allegorized under the figure of an old many with white hair and beard, two large wings at his back, an hour-glass in one hand and a scythe in the other. It is in its cutting and destructive quality that the scythe is here referred to. Time is thus the great mower who reaps his harvest of men. Freemasonry has adopted this symbolism, and in the Third Degree the seythe is described as an emblem of time, which cuts the brittle thread of life and makes havoc among the human race.

• SEA AND FIELD LODGES

The Grand Lodge of England has warranted three Naval Lodges as follows: One on board His Majesty's ship the Vanguard. This Lodge was warranted in 1760 and is now known as the London dodge No. 108, it having removed to that city 1768. Another Lodge was warranted in 1762 on board the ship Prince at Plymouth. This lodge was removed in 1764 on board the ship Guadaloupe (see Ro7yal Somerset House and Inertness Lodge). Later on this Lodge was again moved to Somerset House in 1766.

A Lodge, warranted in 1768 on the ship known as Canceaux at Quebec, was erased in 1792.

A petition for a fourth Sea Lodge to be known as Naval Kilwinning and to be held on board the Ardent was made in 1810 to the Grand Lodge of Scotland, which petition was refused. There seems to be no question as to Dunckerley being responsible for the formation of the first two of the Sea Lodges here listed although he had nothing to do with the third (see Thomas Dunckerley, Henry Sadler, London, 1891, pages 68-73; also Military Lodges).

• SEAFARING MASONS

That seafaring man who appears in one of the Degrees, and who as a character is of Shakespearean brevity and poetic power, was always followed by eager interest and applause in the Eighteenth Century by one kind of Masonic audience, the Brethren among the "salt water Lodges" in cities along the coasts; these were the "sea brothers," "mariner Masons, " "our Brethren and Lodges in ships," the famous and far-going seamen of the Craft in the days of sail. A reader of the Minutes of these Lodges is tempted to believe at the end that every Jack Tar in Britain must have been a Mason.

Thus, Sir Francis Columbine, many years the Right Worshipful Master of Royal Naval Lodge at Bapping, is credited with having raised 600 American captains and 400 British Naval officers in twenty years; Old Dundee, its neighbor Lodge, had 267 "Sea-members" (a special classification) in 1810.

The great Thomas Dunckerley, the largest figure in the first days of Grand Chapter and Grand Encampment, u as made a Mason in the latter in 1761, and found there twenty-six others who, like himself (he was in the Navy), were "sea-members." These seafaring Brothers of Britain, along with other thousands from America, Canada, Europe, and the West Indies, carried the Craft into almost every port in the world, and often were the first to plant it in newly-opened countries, as in South Africa, New Zealand, Hawaii, China, India, Egypt. Can any Brother explain why the historians of Masonry (and mea culpa) have failed to give a chapter to them? they were the missionaries, they and Army and Naval Lodges, of Freemasonry as a universal, a worldwide Brotherhood. Many of the rumors, whispers, traditions of Masonry in America long before 1730 become credible and understandable if it is remembered how many Mason "sea captains" were coming into the ports of Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk.

• SEAL

A stamp on which letters and a device are carved for the purpose of making an impression, and also the wax or paper on which the impression is made. Lord Coke defines a seal to be an impression on wax, sigillum est cera impressa, and wax was originally the legal material of a seal. Many old Masonic Diplomas and Charters are still in existence, where the seal consists of a eireular tin box filled with wax, on which the seal is impressed, the box being attached by a ribbon to the parchment But now the seal is placed generally on a piece of circular paper.

The form of a seal is circular; oval seals were formerly appropriated to ecclesiastical dignitaries and religious houses, and the shape alluded to the old Christian symbol of the Vesica Piscis. No Masonic document is valid unless it has apes pended to it the seal of the Lodge or Grand Lodge. Foreign Grand Lodges never recognize the transactions of subordinate Lodges out of their Jurisdictions, if the standing of the Lodges is not guaranteed by the seal of the Grand Lodge and the signatures of the open officers.

• SEAL, THE GREAT

On the reverse of the silver certificate for one dollar ("dollar bill") issued by the Treasury Department of the United States is a symbolic design representing a truncated pyramid on a shield surrounded by two mottoes in Latin. It has been stated or intimated in Masonic periodicals that this is a Masonic design, or else was suggested by Masonic symbolism, but this is a mistake; the design is nothing other than the reverse side (and therefore the less familiar side) of the Great Seal of the United States, has no Masonic significance, and was not suggested by Masonic symbols; and, as will be seen, of the three men responsible for the design only one was a Mason. On July 4, 1776, the Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson a special Committee to draw up the design for a Great Seal. Many designs were submitted to the Committee; one made by William Barton, somewhat altered, was adopted by the Congress on June 20, 1782. The obverse ("face") and reverse sides of the shield are described in technical heraldic language as follows:

"Arms. Poleways stripes of thirteen pieces argent and gules; a chief azure; the escutcheon on the breast of the American eagle displayed proper, holding in his dexter talon an olive branch, and in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arrows, all proper; and in his beak a scroll, inscribed with the motto E PLURIBUS UNUM. "For the Crest: over the head of the eagle which appears above the escutcheon, a glory breaking through a cloud proper, and surrounding thirteen stars, forming a constellation, argent and on an azure field "Reverse. A pyramid unfinished. In the zenith an eye in a triangle, surrounded with a glory, proper; over the eye these words 'Annuit Coeptis.' On the base of the pyramid the numerical letters 'MDCCLD and underneath, the following motto: 'Novus Ordo Seclorum'."

The poleways were vertical stripes. Argent was white; gules was red; azure was blue; the eseutcheon, was the shield; proper meant upright; dexter is the right hand, toward the right; sinister is the left Loosely translated Annuit Coeptis is "God has fax ored; or prospered, the undertaking"; Norus Ordo Seclorum is "A new series of ages," that is, a new order of things. The obverse side of the Seal is really the Chat of Arms of the United States. Mr. Barton, the designer, explained the eseutcheon, etc., as "denoting the confederacy of the United States of America, and the preservation of their union through Congress." He explained that the pyramid on the reverse side "signifies strength and duration; the eye over it and the motto alludes to the many signal interpositions of Providence in favor of the American cause. The date underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence; and the words under it signify the beginning of the new American era, which commences from that date." It is significant for American history that the Great Seal was adopted five years before the Constitution was written, and reflects the then prevalent idea of a confederation of thirteen independent nations loosely tied together by a Congress. This was a unilateral government, and consisted wholly of Congress. The Constitution introduced a wholly different system, a tripartite government with three equal departments of the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary, each in balance with the other two. It is for this reason that the Great Seal does not include emblems of either the Presidency or of the Supreme Court.

• SEAL OF SOLOMON

The Seal of Solomon or the Shield of David, for under both names the same thing was denoted, is a hexagonal figure consisting of two interlaced triangles, thus forming the outlines of six-pointed star. Upon it was inscribed one of the sacred names of God, from which inscription it was opposed principally to derive its talismanic powers.

These powers were very extensive, for it was believed that it would extinguish fire, prevent Wounds in a anfliet, and perform many other wonders. The sews called it the Shield of David in reference to the protection which it gave to its Possessors. But to we other Orientalists it was more familiarly known s the Seal of Solomon. Among these imaginative people, there was a very prevalent belief in the magical character of the King of Israel. He was esteemed rather as a great magician than as a great monarch, and by the signet which he wore, on which this talismanic seal was engraved, he is supposed to have acomplished the most extraordinary actions, and by it to have enlisted in his service the labors of the genil for the construction of his celebrated Temple. Robinson Crusoe and the Thousand and One Nights are two books which every child has read, and which no man or woman ever forgets. In the latter are many allusions to Solomon's Seal. Especially is there a story of an unlucky fisherman who fished up in his net a bottle secured by a leaden stopper, on which this seal was impressed. On opening it, a fierce Afrite, or evil genii, came forth, who gave this account of the cause of his imprisonment. Solomon," said he, "the son of David, exhorted me to embrace the faith and submit to his authority; but I refused; upon which he called for this bottle, and confined me in it, and closed it upon me with the leaden stopper and stamped upon it his seal, with the great name of God engraved upon it. Then he gave the vessel to one of the genii, who submitted to him, with orders to cast me into the sea." Of all talismans, there is none, except, perhaps, the cross, which was so generally prevalent among the ancients as this Seal of Solomon or Shield of David. It has been found in the cave of Elephanta, in India, accompanying the image of the Deity, and many other places celebrated in the Brahmanical and the Buddhist religions. Hay, in an exploration into Western Barbary, found it in the harem of a Moor, and in a Jewish synagogue, where it was suspended in front of the recess in which the sacred rolls were deposited. In fact, the interlaced triangles or Seal of Solomon may be considered as par excellence, by merit, the Creat Oriental talisman.

In time, with the progress of the new religion, it ceased to be invested with a magical reputation, although the Hermetic philosophers of the Middle Ages did employ it as one of their mystical symbols; but true to the theory that superstitions may be repudiated but never will be forgotten, it was adopted by the Christians as one of the emblems of their faith, but with varying interpretations. The two triangles were said sometimes to be symbols of fire and water, sometimes of prayer and remission, sometimes of creation and redemption, or of life and death, or of resurrection and judgment. But at length the ecclesiologists seem to have settled on the idea that the figure should be considered as representing the two natures of our Lord—His Divine and His human nature.

Thus we find the Seal of Solomon dispersed all over Europe, in medallions, made at a very early period, on the breasts of the recumbent effigies of the dead as they lie in their tombs, and more especially in churches, w here it is presented to us either carved on the walls or painted in the windows. Everywhere in Europe and now in the United States, where ecclesiastics architecture is beginning at length to find a development of taste, is this old Eastern talisman to be found doing its work as a Christian emblem. The spirit of the old talismanic faith is gone, but the form remains, to be nourished by us as the natural homage of the present to the past.

Among the old Cabalistic Hebrews, the Seal of Solomon was, as a talisman, of course deemed to be a sure preventive against the danger of fire. The more modern Jews, still believing in its talismanic virtues placed it as a safeguard on their houses and on other buildings, because they were especially liable to the danger of fire. The common people, seeing this figure affixed always to brew-houses, mistook it for a sign, and in time, in Upper Germany, the hexagon, or Seal of Solomon, was adopted by German innkeepers as the sign of a beer house, just as the ehequers have been adopted in England, though with a different history, as the sign of a tavern (see Magic Squares).

• SEALS, BOOK OF THE SEVEN

"And I saw," says Saint John (Apocalypse or Revelation v, 1), "in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the back side, sealed with seven seals." The seal denotes that which is secret, and seven is the number of perfection; hence the Book of the Seven Seals is a symbol of that knowledge which is profoundly Secured from all unhallowed search. In reference to the passage quoted, the Back of the Set in Seals is adopted as a symbol in the Apocalyptic Degree of the Knights of the East and West, the seventeenth of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SEALS, KEEPER OF THE

An officer who has charge of the seal or seals of the Lodge. It is found in some of the advanced Degrees and in Continental Lodges, but not recognized in the York or American Rites. In German Lodges he is called Siegelbewahrer, and in French, Garde des Sceauz.

• SEARCH FOR TRUTH

This is the object of all Freemasonry and it is pursued from the first to the last step of initiation. The Apprentice begins it seeking for the light which is symbolized by the WORD, itself only a symbol of Truth. At a Fellow Craft he continues the search, still asking for more light. And the Master Mason, thinking that he has reached it, obtains only its substitute; for the True Word, Divine Truth, dwells not in the first temple of our earthly life, but can be found only in the second temple of the eternal life.

There is a beautiful allegory of the great Milton, who thus describes the search after truth: Truth came into the world with her Divine Master and was a perfect shape and glorious to look Upon. Put when He ascended, and His apostles after Him were laid asleep, there straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as the story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely frame into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds of heaven. Ever since that time the friends of Truth, such as dust appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them.

• SECEDERS

During the anti-Masonic excitement in the United States of America, which gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party, many Freemasons, fearing the loss of popularity, or governed by an erroneous view of the character of Freemasonry, withdrew from the Order, and took a part in the political and religious opposition to it. These men called them selves, and were recognized by the title of, seceders or seceding Masons.

• SECOND TEMPLE

See Temple of Zerubbabel

• SECRECY AND SILENCE

These virtues constitute the very essence of all Masonic character; they are the safeguard of the Institution, giving to it all its security and perpetuity, and are enforced by frequent admonitions in all the Degrees, from the lowest to the highest. The Entered Apprentice begins his Masonic career by learning the duty of secrecy and silence. Hence it is appropriate that in that Degree which is the consummation of initiation, in which the whole cycle of Masonic science is completed, the abstruse machinery of symbolism should be employed to impress the same important virtues on the mind of the neophyte or newcomer. The same principles of secrecy and silence existed in all the ancient Mysteries and systems of worship. When Aristotle was asked what thing appeared to him to be most difficult of performance, he replied, "To be secret and silent."

"If we turn our eyes back to antiquity," says Calcott (Candid Disquisition, page 50), "we shall find that the old Egyptians had so great a regard for silence and secrecy in the mysteries of their religion, that they set up the god Harpocrates, to whom they paid peculiar honor and veneration, who was represented with the right hand placed near the heart, and the left down by his side, covered with a skin before, full of eyes and ears, to signify, that of many things to be seen and heard, few are to be published."

Apuleius, who was an initiate in the Mysteries of Isis, says: "By no peril will I ever be compelled to disclose to the uninitiated the things that I have had intrusted to me on condition of silence." Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus, has collected several examples of the reluctance with which the ancients approached a mystical-subjeet, and the manner in which they shrank from divulging any explanation or fable which had been related to them at the Mysteries, under the seal of secrecy and silence.

Lastly, in the school of Pythagoras, these lessons were taught by the Sage to his disciples. A novitiate of five years was imposed upon each pupil, which period was to be passed in total silence, and in religious and philosophical contemplation. And at length, when he was admitted to full fellowship in the society, an oath of secrecy was administered to him on the sacred tetraetys, which was equivalent to the Jewish Tetragrammaton.

Silence and secrecy are called "the cardinal virtues of a Seleet Master," in the Ninth or Select Master's Degree of the American Rite.

Among the Egyptians the sign of Silence was made by pressing the index finger of the right hand on the lips. It was thus that they represented Harpoerates, the god of silence, whose statue was placed at the entrance of all temples of Isis and Serapis, to indicate that Silence and secrecy were to be preserved as to all that occurred within.

• SECRECY, SILENCE, CIRCUMSPECTION

In his article on this subject on page 920 Albert G. Mackey followed the clues of the Ancient Mysteries.

The use of such clues has a value even if a student is unable to find any historical connection between the old Mystery Cults which were destroyed along with the Roman Empire, and Freemasonry, the first beginnings of which were not made for some seven or so centuries after that destruction, because the data Mackey cites show that secrecy has often been used by societies of the most honored and exalted reputation. Secrecy in and of itself is neither good nor bad; those adjectives can only apply to the use to which it is put. It was argued by the American Anti-Masons of 1826-1850 that Freemasonry would not have secrets did it not carry on practices which could not endure inspection. They abandoned their argument after everything in the Craft had been exposed, inspected, and published countless times; they could have abandoned it sooner had they only paused to think that each of them had secrets of his own, had privacies in his family, that he discussed matters in confidence with associates, that there are secret formulas in science and in business, that any committee or board of directors meeting in executive session is meeting in t secrecy—that the world's diplomacy seldom lets the peoples concerned know what it is doing.

When the normally everlasting uses of secrecy are so common, the Anti-Masons had no grounds to accuse Masons of crimes merely because Masons were using for their Own purposes what every man and every family and almost every association uses every day for unexceptionable purposes. Freemasonry is not a secret society; everybody knows that it exists; its rooms and temples are public and are conspicuously marked; it has printed its Constitutions and each year it publishes its Proceedings; in the United States it has maintained as many as 120 journals or magazines at one time; many tens of thousands of books have been written about it, and it maintains hundreds of libraries. Freemasonry is a society with secrets, but is not a secret society.

Silence has no necessary connection with secrecy; may or may not be its corollary. Silence is often maintained in the most public places and for the most public purposes; spectators sit silent in courtroom and in the theater, the congregation sits silent in church or synagogue, the audience sits silent while the orator speaks, the general maintains silence about his battle plans. There are secrets in nature which scientists search out; the silences of nature are of a different kind, the silence of the seas, the silence of the wilderness, the silence of the desert.

A Masonic Lodge is not a club, a forum, a public gathering, a debating society, or a platform meeting, but is a lodge—a unique form of organization; it is organized within and without, from top to bottom; each member has his place or station in it, and no man is foot-loose; from beginning to end it goes according to a fixed procedure, and conducts its affairs according to a strict Order of Business; anything extraneous or irrelevant to that procedure is out of order, and the Master cannot permit it to be brought on the floor because he is not a presiding officer who can act according to his own will but an installed officer and therefore can act only as the rules governing his office compel him to act.

It is for this reason that the Fraternity maintains silence about the outside world at times when almost every other society or association is most vocal, and naturally so—in a time of political crisis, at the making of a war, in periods of social upheaval, etc. The young Italian Fascists hoodlums who broke into Lodge rooms were agog because of what they expected to find—a weird machinery, an alehemists' laboratory, a magicians' den, what not; they were astounded to find nothing but an empty room. The Fraternity was in silence. A historian of the Craft goes through analogous experience; he reads through Lodge Minutes or Grand Lodge Proceeding (or Chapters, Consistories, Councils, Commanderies) expecting to find records there of an old excitement about the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or the Anti-Masonic Crusade, or the World Wars; he finds only a silence.

Paradoxically enough there is neither silence nor secrecy within the walls. The nervous Pope Leo XIII who all his days was afraid of bogeys, wrote into his Encyclical against Freemasons on April 20, 1884: "Nay, there are in them many secrets which are by law carefully concealed not only from the profane, but also from many associated [members viz., the lost and intimate intentions, the hidden and unknown chiefs, the hidden and secret meetings, the resolutions and methods and means by which they will be carried into execution." Leo had been misinformed. The Fraternity maintains neither secrecy nor silence within itself about its own affairs; everything that is lawfully carried on in a Lodge is carried on without silence and in the full light. Grand Officers live in glass houses; a Master acts in the presence of his Lodge—if it is not there he cannot even declare it open.

Nothing is hidden from any member. Any member of a Lodge is privileged by the laws to demand any information about what is done by his Lodge. There are no "hidden and unknown chiefs" (the Pope must have had the Italian Black Hand Society in mind) because every "chief" is elected by ballot, and he has nowhere to hide.

Silence is connected with circumspection in a phrase which Masons have learned by heart. Circumspection is a self-defining word, being a contraction of two Latin terms slightly altered, and meaning "to look around," to make sure of having the facts before making a decision or beginning an action. In Freemasonry it is used in a sense somewhat different from its use elsewhere, having a peculiarity in our nomenclature which is the expression of the "peculiarity" (or uniqueness) of Freemasonry itself.

It means that Freemasonry follows a path which was surveyed long ago and staked out with the Ancient Landmarks; it is one that Freemasons themselves understand but not outsiders; in consequence it is easy for outsiders to misunderstand Freemasonry, or to be misled by appearances, or to attribute to it purposes it does not have, hence the Craft must act circumspectly, taking such facts into consideration, and in order not to misrepresent itself. For centuries before the first Grand Lodge, Masons like men everywhere had a great fondness for pageants and processions, and this was especially true in London, where the old Mason Company often spent large sums of money on costumes, music, floats, etc., and great throngs would stand for hours to watch the spectacle.

This ancient custom was continued by Lodges for some years after 1717— the Grand Lodge went in a body, in full regalia, to bring the newly elected Grand Master from his home to the Grand Lodge room for his installation; Lodges went in procession in regalia to attend church, theater, corner-stone laying, etc. But by the middle of the century a great change came over London crowds and London street manners; gangs of hoodlums roved about, drunkards were everywhere, and these crowds began to hoot and throw stones and to run through processions, and to break them up; and there grew up the custom of holding "mock" processions, roistering, ribald, derisive, coarse, in order to ridicule something or somebody. The Grand Lodge ordered a complete discontinuance of Masonic processions when the public began to take Masonry to be a roistering, irreverent society of drinkers and mockers because it appeared on the streets. That was an act of circumspection. It was a case of "Don't do it," "Don't say it," and as it works out in practice that usually is what circumspection calls for, therefore it has become connected with secrecy and silence.

• SECRETARIES GUILD OF FREEMASONRY FOR NORTH AMERICA

See the Masonic Grand Secretaries Guild

• SECRETARY

The recording and corresponding officer of a Lodge. It is his duty to keep a just and true record of all things proper to be written, to receive all moneys that are due the Lodge, and to pay them over to the Treasurer. The jewel of his office is a pen, and his position in Lodges of the United States is on the left of the Worshipful Master in front, but in English Lodges he is usually found with the Treasurer at the right, in the North.

• SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE HOLY EMPIRE

The title given to the Secretary of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SECRETARY, GRAND

See Grand Secretary

• SECRET DOCTRINE

The secret doctrine of the Jews was, according to Steinschneider, nothing else than a system of metaphysics founded on the Commentaries on the Law and the legends of the Talmudists. Of this secret doctrine, Maimonides says: "Beware that you take not these words of the wise men in their literal signification, for this would be to degrade and sometimes to contradict the sacred doctrine. Search rather for the hidden sense; and if you cannot find the kernel, let the shell alone, and confess that you cannot understand it." All mystical societies, and even liberal philosophers, were, to a comparatively recent period, accustomed to veil the true meaning of their instructions in intentional obscurity, lest the unlearned and uninitiated should be offended. The Ancient Mysteries had their secret doctrine; so had the school of Pythagoras, and the sect of the Gnostics.

The Alchemists, as Hitchcock has clearly shown, gave a secret and spiritual meaning to their jargon about the Transmutation of Metals, the Elixir of Life, and the Philosopher's Stone. Freemasonry alone has no secret doctrine. Its philosophy is open to the world. Its modes of recognition by which it secures identification, and its rites and eeremonies which are its method of instruction, alone are secret. All men may know the tenets of the Masonic Creed.

• SECRET MASTER

The Fourth Degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the first of what are called the Ineffable Degrees. It refers to those circumstances which occurred at the Temple when Solomon repaired to the building for the purpose of supplying the loss of its illustrious builder by the appointment of seven experts, among whom were to be divided the labors which heretofore had been entrusted to one gigantic mind. The lecture elaborately explains the mystic meaning of the sacred things which were contained in the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies. The Lodge is hung with black curtains strewed with tears, symbolic of grief. There should be eighty-one lights, distributed by nine times nine; but this number is often dispensed with, and three times three substituted. Later instructions reduce them to eight.

There are but two presiding officers—a Master, styled Puissant, and representing Wing Solomon, and an Inspector representing Adoniram, the son of Abda, who had the inspection of the workmen on Mount Lebanon, and who is said to have been the first Secret Master Solomon is seated in the east, clothed in mourning robes lined with ermine, holding a scepter in his hand, and decorated with a blue sash from the right shoulder to the left hip, from which is suspended a triangle of gold. Before him is placed a triangular altar, on which is deposited a wreath of laurel and olive leaves.

Adoniram, called Venerable Inspector, is seated in the west, but without any implement of office, in commemoration of the fact that the works were suspended at the time of the institution of this Degree. He is decorated with a triangular white collar, bordered with black, from which is suspended an ivory key, with the letter Z engraved thereon, which constitute the collar, and jewel of the Degree. These decorations are worn by all the Brethren. The apron white edged with black and with black strings; the flap blue, with an open eye thereon embroidered in gold. The modern instruction prescribes that two branches of olive and laurel crossing each other shall be on the middle of the apron.

• SECRET MONITOR

An honorary or side Degree once commonly conferred in the United States. The communication of it was not accompanied, it is true, with any impressive ceremonies, but it inculates a lesson of unfaltering friendship which the prospect of danger could not appall, and the hour of adversity could not betray. It is, in fact, devoted to the practical elucidation of the Masonic virtue of Brotherly Love. In conferring it, those passages of Scripture which are contained in the twentieth chapter of the First Book of Samuel, from the sixteenth to the twenty-third, and from the thirty-fifth to the forty-second verses inclusive, are usually considered as appropriate.

It may be conferred on a worthy Master Mason by any Brother who is in possession of its Ritual. There was in Holland, in 1778, a secret Masonic society called the Order of Jonathan and David, which was probably much the same as this American Degree. Kloss in his Catalogue, of 1844, gives the title of a book published in that year at Amsterdam which gives its statutes and formulary of reception.

The Grand Recorder W. C. Spratling, of London, England, where a Grand Council of the Order of the Secret Monitor was formed on June 17, 1887, has furnished information from which the following notes have been prepared. He has found that the Order of the Secret Monitor is developed from a still more ancient Degree known as the Brotherhood of Dated and Jonathan, and is at least as old as Freemasonry itself, its principles and watch-words being founded upon the examples set by the two Hebrew Princes, as recorded in the his history and traditions of the Jews. He points out that it is often forgotten that the Israelites, slaves in Egypt for more than four hundred years, absorbed much of the ancient lore of their taskmasters who long before Jewish history begins, were already an ancient race in an advanced state of civilization. They indeed trace their mysteries as a heritage Mom a still more ancient people who overran Asia Minor long before the dawn of written history.

Brother Spratling says that Statutes covering such a Body as the above are on record in Amsterdam having the date of 1773 and indicating that the organization had been founded three years earlier. Further traces of this brotherhood of David and Jonathan are found in ] 77S hut the working of the degree seems to have had its development in the United States where it was carried by immigrants to view Amsterdam and from thence it spread through the Republic in a very simple form and capable of considerable variation. However, the prevailing ceremonies were adopted and then somewhat adapted for English use by the Grand Council in that country. The Degree had been communicated to any Master Mason with little ceremony at any time or place.

In this way it was communicated to the following Brethren at or about the dates mentioned;

1840—Dr. Issachar Zacharie in California.

1845—Colonel Shadwell E. Clerke, in Malta.

1846—James Lewis Thomas, in St. Vincent, the West Indies.

1848—Rev. J. Oxley Oxland, M.A., in Jerusalem

1865—Charles Fitzgerald Alatier, by an American passing through London.

Three Degrees have been prepared for use in England. The Council of Allied Masonic Degrees in the United States and the similar Body in England have also worked the Secret Monitor, but independently.

• SECRET OF THE SECRETS, THE

A Degree cited in the nomenclature of Fustier

• SECRET SOCIETIES

Secret societies may be divided into two classes: First, those whose secrecy consists in nothing more than methods by which the members are enabled to recognize each other; and in certain doctrines, symbols, or instructions which can be obtained only after a process of initiation, and under the promise that they shall be made known to none who have not submitted to the same initiation, but which with the exception of these particulars, have no reservations from the public. Second, those societies which, in addition to their secret modes of recognition and secret doctrine, add an entire secrecy as to the object of their association, the times and places of their meeting, and even the very names of their members.

To the first of these classes belong all those moral or religious secret associations which have existed from the earliest times. Such were the Ancient Mysteries, whose object was, by their initiations, to cultivate a purer worship than the popular one; such, too, the schools of the old philosophers, like Pythagoras and Plato, who in their esoteric instructions taught a higher doctrine than that which they Communicated to their exoteric scholars. Such, also, are the modern secret societies which have adopted an exclusive form only that they may restrict the social enjoyment which it is their object to cultivate, or the system of benevolence for which they are organized, to the persons who are united with them by the tie of a common covenant, and the possession of a common knowledge.

Such, lastly, is Freemasonry, which is a secret society only as respects its signs, a few of its legends and traditions, and its method of inculcating its mystical philosophy, but which, as to everything else—its design, its object, its moral and religious tenets, and the great doctrine which it teaches—is as open a society as if it met on the highways beneath the sun of day, and not within the well-guarded portals of a Lodge.

To the second class of secret societies belong those which sprung up first in the Middle Ages, like the Vehmgericht of Westphalia, formed for the secret but certain punishment of criminals; and in the eighteenth century those political societies like the Carbonari, which have been organized at revolutionary periods to resist the oppression or overthrow the despotism of tyrannical governments. It is evident that these two classes of secret societies are entirety different in character; but it has been the great error of writers like Barruel and Robison, who have attacked Freemasonry on the ground of its being a secret association that they utterly confounded the two classes. An interesting discussion on this subject took place in 1848, in the National Assembly of France, during the consideration of those articles of the law by which secret societies were prohibited. A part of this discussion is worth preserving, and is in the following words:

Bolette: I should like to have some one define what in meant by a secret society.

Coquerel: Those are secret societies which have made none of the declarations prescribed by law.

Paulin Gillon: I would ask if Freemasonry is also to be suppressed?

Flocon: I begin by declaring that, under a republican government, every secret society having for its object a change of the form of such government ought to be severely dealt with. Secret societies may he directed against the sovereignty of the people, and this is the reason why I ask for their suppression; but, from the want of a precise definition, I would not desire to strike, as secret societies, assemblies that are perfectly innocent.

All my life, until the 24th of February, have I lived in secret societies Now I desire them no more. Yes, we have spent our life in conspiracies, and we had the right to do so, for we lived under a government which did not derive its sanctions from the people. To-day I declare that under a republican government, and with universal suffrage, it is a crime to belong to such an association Conquered. As to Freemasonry, your Committee has decided that it is not a secret society. A society may have a secret, and yet not be a secret society. I have not the honor of being a Freemasons.

The President: The thirteenth article has been amended and decided that a secret society is one which seeks to conceal its existence and its objects. Secret societies, whose members take any oath binding them to engage in mutiny or sedition, or disturb the peace, or whose members and officers are concealed from society at large have been declared unlawful in various countries, England adopting measures to that end in 1799, l817 and 1846, but on these occasions specific exemption was made of Masonic Lodges. On the Continent of Europe the Carbonari has been confused by some authorities with Freemasonry or, at least, assumed to be a sort of political branch of it though this is, of course, far from the understanding of our institution possessed by those within te fold The Carbonari was founded in Naples by the Republicans in 1808 to destroy French rule in Italy The King of Naples in 1814 soon found the armed Carbonari useful as a means of driving Murat, a Freemason, out of the country. Later on the organization assisted the Austrians also to drive out the French and, gathering numbers up to what is claimed to be half a million members, spread into France and other countries.

Other secret societies found on the Continent and active in various countries are the Camorra and the Mafia. These secret societies need only to be mentioned here because the Roman Catholic Church has united Freemasonry with such political organizations in its condemnation (see Section Act, Politics, Carbonari, Camorra, and Mafia).

• SECRET VAULT

See Vault, Secret

• SECTARIANISM

Freemasonry repudiates all sectarianism, and recognizes the tenets of no sect as preferable to those of any other, requiring in its followers assent only to those dogmas of the universal religion which teach the existence of God and the resurrection to eternal life. (see Toleration)

• SECULAR LODGES

The epithet Secular has sometimes, but very incorrectly, been applied t o Subordinate Lodges to distinguish them from Grand Lodges. In such a connection the word is unmeaning, or, what is worse, is a term bearing a meaning entirely different from that which was intended by the writer. "Secular," says Richardson, "is used as distinguished from eternal, and equivalent to temporal; pertaining to temporal things, things of this world; worldly; also opposed to spiritual, to holy. " Every other orthoepist gives substantially the same definition. It is then evident, from this definition, that the word secular may be applied to all Masonic Bodies, but not to one class of them in contradistinction to another. All Masonic Lodges are secular, because they are worldly, and not spiritual or holy institutions. But a subordinate Lodge is no more secular than a Grand Lodge.

• SEDITION ACT

On July 12, 1799, the British Parliament alarmed at the progress of revolutionary principles enacted a law commonly known as the Sedition Act, for the suppression of secret societies. But the true principles of Freemasonry were so well understood by the legislators of Great Britain many of whom were members of the Order, that the following clause was inserted in the Act: And whereas certain Societies have been long accustomed to be holden in this Kingdom, under the denomination of Lodges of Freemasons, the meetings whereof have been in a great measure directed to charitable purposes, be it therefore enacted, that nothing in this Act shall extend to the meetings of any such society or Lodge which shall, before the passing of this Act, have been usually holden under the said denomination. and in conformity to the rules prevailing among the said Societies of Freemasons.

• SEEING

One of the five human senses, whose importance is treated of in the Fellow Craft's Degree. By sight, things at a distance are, as it were, brought near, and obstacles of space overcome. So in Freemasonry, by a judicious use of this sense, in modes which none but Freemasons comprehend, men distant from each other in language, in religion, and in politics, are brought near, and the impediments of birth and prejudice are overthrown. But, in the natural world, sight cannot be exercised without the necessary assistance of light, for in darkness we are unable to see so in Freemasonry, the peculiar advantages of Masonic sight require, for their enjoyment, the blessing of Masonic light. Illuminated by its divine rays, the Freemason sees where others are blind; and that which to the profane is but the darkness of ignorance, is to the initiated filled with the light of knowledge and understanding.

• SEEKERS

The French word is Chercheurs. The First Degree of the Order of Initiated Knights and Brothers of Asia.

• SEFIDD SCHAMAGAN

A secret Moslem society, called also the Candidati, from being clothed in white. They taught that the wicked would he transformed, after death, into beasts, while the good would ho reabsorbed into the Divine Creator. The Chief was known as the Veiled Prophet (see Grotto).

• SEJJIN

The Arabic register of all the wicked, also the title of the residence of Eblis.

• SELAMU ALEIKUM, ES

The Arabic salutation of Peace be with you; which meets with the response Aleikum es Salaam. These expressions are prominently in use by ancient Arabic Associations (see Salaam).

• SERMONS, MASONIC

Sermons on Maconic subjects, and delivered in churches before Masonic Bodies or on Masonic festivals, are peculiar to the British and the American Freemasons. Neither the French nor German, nor, indeed, any continental literature of Freemasonry, supplies us with any examples. The first Masonic sermon of which we have any knowledge, from its publication, was "A General Charge to Masons, delivered at Christ Church, in Boston, on the 27th of December, 1749, by the Rev. Charles Brockwell, A.M., published at the request of the Grand Officers and Brethren there."

It was, however, not printed at Boston, Massachusetts, where it was delivered, but was first published in the Freemasons' Pocket Companion for 1754. Brockwell was chaplain of the English troops stationed at Boston. But in the United States of America, at least, the custom of delivering sermons on Saint John's day prevailed many years before. In Doctor Mackey's History of Freemasonry in South Carolina (pages 1520) will be found the authentic evidence that the Lodges in Charleston attended Divine Service on December 27, 1738, and for Several years after, on each of which occasions it is to be presumed that a sermon was preached. In 1742 it is distinctly stated, from a contemporary gazette, that "both Lodges proceeded regularly, with the ensigns of their Order and music before them, to church, where they heard a very learned sermon from their Brother, the Rev. Mr. Durand."

The first Masonic sermon we have recorded here eloquently paid tribute to the virtues taught among the Craftsmen and after the centuries of years is stimulating reading- A copy of it by Brother Dudley Wright was reprinted in the New Age Magazine, October, 1924- This sermon was preached at Boston, Massachusetts, by Brother Rev. Charles Brockwell, M.A., one of the Chaplains of King George II. The sermon is entitled Brotherly Love. Recommended, and it was preached before the "Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons" in Christ Church, Boston- It was published "at the request of the Society" and on the flyleaf is the following official Minute: In the Grand Lodge, held at the Exchange Tavern in Boston on Wednesdays 27th December 1749. Agreed That the thanks of the Ancient and Honorable Society be given to our Brother the Rev. Mr. Charles Brockwell, For his sermon preached this day before the said society and that the Right Worshipful Brother Hugh McDaniel, Brother Henry Price and Brother Aston request a copy of the same to be printed by the society.

Charles Pelham, Secretary.

The sermon is dedicated to the Brethren as follows:

To the Right Worshipful Thomas Oxnard, Esquire Provincial Grand Master of North America; Mr. Hugh McDaniel, Deputy Grand Master, Mr. Benjamin Hallowel, Mr. John Box, Grand Wardens, and others, the Worshipful Brothers and Fellows of the Ancient and honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons, this sermon, preached and published at your request, is dedicated by their most affectionate Brother and humble servant, Charles Brockwell.

The text chosen was First Thessalonians iv, 9: "But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you; for ye yourselves are taught of God b to love one another," and in the course of his discourse, Brother Brockwell said: The principal intention in forming societies is undoubtedly uniting men in the stricter bonds of love, for men, considered as social creatures, must derive their happiness from each other, every man being designed by Providence to promote the good of others. The apostle displays the necessity of brotherly love from a standpoint far more noble than that of interest. Our obligations to resemble God in this favored attribute of love should be incentives to our most earnest endeavors thereafter, should infuse our love and charity by that irresistible influence of example. I have had the honor of being a member of this Aneient and Honorable Soeiety for many years, have sustained many of its offices, and can and do aver in this sacred place and before the Great Architect of the World that I never could observe aught therein but what was justifiable and commendable according to the strictest rules of society. Thus, being founded on the rules of the Gospel, the doing the will of God, and the subduing our passions, are highly conducive to every sacred and social virtue Our very Constitutions furnish a sufficient argument to confute all gainsayers. For no combination of wicked men, for wicked purposes, ever lasted long. The want of virtue on which mutual trust and confidence is founded, soon i divides and breaks them to pieces.

Nor would men of unquestionable wisdom, known integrity, strict honor, undoubted veracity, and good sense ever continue it as all the world may see they have done and now do, or contribute towards supporting it and propagating it to prosperity. As to any objections that have been raised against this Society, they are as ridiculous as they are groundless.

For what can discover more egregious folly in any man than to attempt to villify what he knows nothing of? He might with equal justice abuse or ealumniate anything else that he is unacquainted with. But there are some peculiar customs amongst us: surely these can be liable to no censure. Has not every Society some peculiarities which are not to be revealed to men of different communities?

But some among us behave not so well as might be expected: we fear this is too true, and are heartily sorry for it. But it might be inferred by parity of reason that the misconduct of a Christian is argument against Christianity, a conclusion which, I presume no man will allow. Let us rejoice in every opportunity of serving and obliging each other, for then, and only then, are we answering the great need of our institution.

Brotherly love, relief, and truth oblige us not only to be compassionate and benevolent, but to demonstrate that relief and comfort which the compassion of any members requires and we can bestow without manifest inconvenience to ourselves. The regulations of this Society are calculated not only for the prevention of enmity wrath, and dissension; but for the promotion of love peace, and friendship.

He who neither contrives mischief against others, nor suspects any against himself, has his mind always serene and his affections composed; all the faculties rejoice in harmony and proportion: by these our society subsists and upon these depend its wisdom, strength, and beauty. What are our secrets? If a Brother in necessity seeks relief, 'tis an inviolable secret, because true charity vaunteth not itself. If an overtaken Brother be admonished, 'tis in secret, because charity is kind. If possibly little differences, feuds, or animosities should invade our peaceful walls, they are still kept secret, for charity suffereth long, is not easily provoked thinketh no evil. These and many more are the embellishments that emblazon the Mason's escutcheons.

The occasion did not pass without an attempt to burlesque in print the Masonic celebration of the day. This was done in a peculiar poem of 1750, published at Boston, Massachusetts, with the following title: Entertainment for a Winter's Evening: Being a Full and True Account of a Very Strange and Wonderful Sight Seen in Boston on the Twenty-seventh of December at Noon-day. The Truth of Which can be Attested by a Great Number of People who Actually Saw the Same with Their Own Eyes. By Me, the Hon'ble B. B. Esq.

This article bears the imprint Boston, Printed and Sold by G. Rogers, next to the Prison in Queen Street. The poem, published in 1750, had an introduction addressed To the Reader as follows: Courteous and Loving Reader. I thought it necessary to aequaint thee with three things, which thou wilt, perhaps, be inquisitive about. First, Why thou hast not had the following entertainment sooner. Seeondly. Why it now appears abroad without sheltering itself under the name of some powerful patron. And, Thirdly, Why I have given myself the title I have assumed in the front of it.

As for the first article thou must know, that my great distance from the Press near one hundred miles at this difficult season of the year, made it impossible for me to convey it there sooner. As to the second, I had fully determined to select a number of suitable patrons, but was prevented by finding all of them engaged already, not so much as one being left, under whose wings this poor sheet might retire for protection.

Thirdly, the title I have taken to myself, sourlds, I confess somewhat oddly. Nor indeed should I have ventured upon it, had I not been warranted by a Famous Society in an Example whieh they have lately set me. For though this Society is, perhaps, the only one in the world that ever gave itself those pompous epithets, yet it is allowed to be the standard of Antiquity and Honour. Of Antiquity—as it can boast an Era many years higher than that of the world. Of Honour—as it is invested with that distinguishing badge, whieh is, at this day, the glory of the greatest Potentates on earth. And lf so, I see no reason why Thou and I should not submit to it as a standard of propierty too I am, Loving Reader, with the Greatest Humility, thine, The Hon'ble B. B. Esq. The full text of this quaint and interesting old poem follows: Oh Muse, renowned for story-telling Fair Clio leave thy airy dwelling. Now while the streams like marble stand Held fast by winter's icy hand; Now, while the hills are clothed in snow; Now while the keen north west winds blow From the bleak fields and chilling air Unto the wormer hearth repair; Where friends in cheerful circle meet, In social conversation sit. Come, Goddess, and our ears regale With a diverting Christmas tale. Oh come, and in thy verse declare Who were the men, and what they were, And what their names, and what their fame And what the cause for which they came To house of God from house of ale, And how the parson told his tale; How they returned, in manner odd, To house of ale from house of God. Free Masons, so the story goes, Have two saints for their patrons chose, And both Saint Johns, one the Baptist, The other the Evangelist. The Baptist had the Lodge which stood Whilom by Jordan's ancient flood. But for what seeret cause the other Has been adopted for a Brother, They cannot, and I will not say, Nee seire fas est omnia. The Masons by procession Having already honored one, (Thou, to perpetuate their glory, Clio, did'st then relate the story.) To show the world they mean fair play, And that each saint should have his day, Now ordered store of belly-timber 'Gainst twenty-seventh of December. For that's the day of Saint John's feast Fixst by the holy Roman priest They then in mode religious chose Their Brother of the roll and rose The sermon to commence: He from the sacred eminence Must first explain and then apply The duties of Free Masonry. At length in scarlet apron drest, Forth rushed the n orning of the fest, And now the bells in steeple play, Hark, ding, dong, bell, they chime away, Until, with solemn toll and steady, The great bell tolls—the parson's ready. Masons at ehureh! Strange auditory! And yet we have as strange a story, For saints, as history attests, Have preached to fishes, birds and beasts, Yea stones so hard: tho' strange, 'tis true, Have sometimes been their hearers too, So good Saint Franeis, man of grace, Himself preached to the braying rnee, And further, as the story passes, Addressed them thus—" My brother asses." Just so old British Wereburga As ecclesiastic writers say Harangued the keener both far and wide; Just so the geese were edified. The crowds attending gaze around, And awful silence reigns profound, Till from the seat which he'd sat an—on Uprose and thus began the parson. Rhite Worshipful, at your command Obedient I in Rostra stand; It proper is and fit to show ' Unto the crowds that gape below and wonder much, and well they may, What on this occasion I can say, Why in the church are met together, Especially so in such cold weather, Such folk as never did appear So overfond of being there. Know then, my friends without more pother That these are Masons I'm a Brother, Masons, said I?—Yes Masons Free, Their deeds and title both agree. While other sects fall out and fight About a trifling mode or rite We firm on Love cemented stand, 'Tis Love unites us heart and hand, Love to a party not confined A love embracing all mankind, Both Catholiek and Protestant, The Scots and eke New England saint, Antonio's followers, and those Who've Crispin for their patron chose, And they who to their idol goose Oft sacrifice the blood of louse. Oh Pine Salubrious! From thy veins Distils the cure of human pains. Hail Sacred Tree! To thee I owe This freedom from a world of woe My heart though grateful, weak my strain, To show thy worth I strive in vain. Could Thracian Orpheus but impart Sit tuneful Iyre and matchless art, And would propitious fates decree Old Nestor's length of days to me That Iyre, that art, that length of days I'd spend in sounding forth thy praise. Still thou shalt never want my blessing;— But to return from this digressing. Those who with razor bright and keen, And careful hand, each morn are seen Devoting to Saint Nicholas The manly honors of the face Him too who works, Ah! cruel deed, The fatal, tough Muscovian weed! And twists the suffocating string In which devoted wretches swing (And, oh my gracious Heaven defend The Brethren from dishonest end.) Her cauldron's smoke with juice of Pine An offering to Saint Catherine. Rhode-Island's differing, motly tribes, Far more than Alec. Ross describes, And light that's new and light that's old, We in our friendly arms enfold, Free, generous and unconfined To outward shape or inward mind. The high and low and great and small. F. s P. as short and A- n tall F. n. n as bulky as a house, And W-. d smaller than a louse, The grave and merry, dull and witty; The fair and brown, deformed and pretty, We all agree, both wet and dry From drunken L to sober I, And Hugh- . But hark, methinks I hear One assuredly whisper in my ear: "Pray, parson, don't affirm but prove; Do they all meet and part in love? Quarrels ofttirmes don't they delight in And now and then a little fighting? Did there not (for the Secret's out) In the last Lodge arise a route? M- with a fist of brass Laid T-. 's nose level with his face, And scarcely had he let his hand go When he received from T-.a d—d blow Now parson, when a nose is broken, Pray, is it friendly sign or tokens 'Tis true—but trifling is the objection. Oft from themselves the best men vary Humanum enim est errare. But what I've said I'll say again, And what I say I will maintain, 'Tis Love, pure Love cements the whole, Love—of the Bottle and the Bowl. But 'tis nigh time to let you go Where you had rather be, I know; And by proceeding I delay The weightier business of the day; For it solid sense affords, Whilst nonsense lurks in many words. Doubting does oft arise from thinking, But truth is only found in drinking— Thus having said, the reverend vicar Dismissed them to their food and liquor. From church to Stones they go to eat; In order walking through the street, But no Right Worshipful was there Pallas forbade him to appear, For, foreseeing that the job Would from all parts collect a mob He wisely cought a cold and stayed At home, at least, if not in bed So when the Greeks 'gainst the Trojans went, Achilles tarry'd in his tent Ashamed he hides himself, nor draws A conquering sword in harlot's cause. See B- k before the aproned throng Marches with sword and book along; The stately ram with courage bold, So stalks before the fleecy fold And so the gander, on the brink Of river, leads his geese to drink And so the geese descend, from gabbling On the dry land, in stream to dab'ling. Three with their white sticks next are seen, One on each side and one between Plump L-W- marches on the right Round as a hoop, as bottle tight, With face full orbed and rosy too So ruddy Cynthia oft we view, When she, from tippling eastern streams, First throws about her evening beams 'Tis he the Brethren all admire, Him for their Steward they require. 'Tis he they view with wondering eyes, 'Tis he their utmost art defies, For though with nicest skill they work all, None of 'em e'er could square his circle Next B- r with M-l paces Though Brothers, how unlike their faces So limners better representing By artful contrast, what they paint. Who's he comes next?—'Tis P. e by name P- e, bv his nose well known to fame These, when the generous choose recruits, Around the brighter radiance shoots. So, on some promontory's height For Neptune's sons the signal light Shines fair, and bed by unctuous stream Sends off to sea a livelier beam. But see the crowds, with what amaze That on the apothecary gaze! 'Tis he, when belly suffers twitch Caused by too retentive breech Adjusts with finger nice and thumb, The ivory tube to patient's bum. A-n high rising offer the rest With tall head and ample chest; So towering stands the tree of Jove And proud o'erlooks the neighboring grove. Where's honest L-ke, that cook from London. For without L-ke the Lodge is undone 'Twas he who oft dispelled their sadness, And filled the Brothers' hearts with gladness For them his ample bowls o'erftowed, His table groaned beneath its load For them he stretched his utmost art Their honors grateful they impart, L-ke in return is made a Brother As good and true as any other, And still, tho' broke with age and wine Preserves the token and the sign. But still I see a numerous train Shall they, alas, unsung remain? Sage H. I of public soul And laughing F- k, friend to the bowl, Meek R- half smothered in the crowd, And R- who sings at church so loud Tall de la R- of Gallic city, Short B- who trips along so pretty, B- d so truss, with gut well fed, He to the hungry deals out bread. And twenty more crowd on my fancy All Brothers—and that's all you can say. Whene'er, for aiding nature frail, Poor bawd must follow the cart's-tail As through fair London's streets she goes The mob, like fame, by moving grows, They shouldering close, press, stink and shove, Scarcely can the procession move. Just sueh a street-eolleeted throng Guarded the brotherhood along Just such a noise, just such a roar, Heard from behind and from before. Till lodged at Stones nor from pursued, The mob with three huzzas conclude. And now, withdrawn from public view, What did the Brethren say and do? Had I the force of Stentor's lungs, A voice of brass, a hundred tongues My tongues and voice and lungs would fail E'er I had finished half my tale, E'er I had told their names and nation Their virtue, arts and occupation, Or in fit strains had half made known What words were spoke, what deeds were done, Clio, 'tis thou alone canst show 'em, For thou'rt a Goddess and must know 'em. But now suppress thy further rhyme And tell the rest another time. Once more, perhaps, the aproned train Hereafter may invite thy strain Then Clio, with descending wing, Shall downward fly again and sing.

The few following comments may be added: The Honorable B. B. Esq. is the pen name of Joseph Green, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1706, was a graduate of Harvard University, 1726, he became a merchant, espoused the Royalist cause, was exiled, and in 1780 died in England. He had a great reputation as a wit. This epitaph was written by a friend for his tombstone long before his death:

Siste, Viator! (Stop, Traveler!) Here lies one

Whose life was whim, whose soul was pun

And if you go too near his hearse,

He'll joke you both in prose and verse.

See also Onderdonk's History of American Verse, pages 41, 42 and 168; Drake's History of Boston, page 629, a reprint of the poem by Sam Briggs of Cleveland, Ohio, with notes on the almanacs of Nathaniel Ames, and articles by Brother R. I. Clegg in the American Freemason, particularly in November, 1911. The preacher, Charles Brockwell was assistant rector of King's Chapel, inducted in 1747, he died in 1755. Drake gives several names of the participants which may be compared with the initials scattered through the poem; Buck, James Perkins, Johnson, Wethred, Captain Benjamin Hallowell, the builder of the ship mentioned in the article in this work headed Clothed, Rea—"probably Mr. John Rea, who kept in Butler's Row in 1748—he was a ship handler," Rowe—"John Rowe was a merchant, an importer, kept on Belcher's Warf in 1744, he lived on Essex Street in 1760."

The Latin phrase, from Horace, thirtieth line of poem, means And to know all things is not permitted.

Brother Briggs gives L-w-s as meaning Lewis Twiner, P-e as Pue, A-n for Doctor Ashton, apothecary at Boston about 1738, died in 1776 aged 74, Luke for Luke Vardy who kept the Royal Exchange Tavern at Boston in 1733, and F-k for Francis Johannot, a distiller and prominent member of the Sons of Liberty, who died in 1775. Stone's was a well-known Tavern. The various Saints mentioned in the text Antonio, Crispin, Nicholas, Catherine, are the patrons of sailors, shoemakers, barbers, and ropemakers (see also Clothed, and Regalia).

Brockwell's, however, is the first of these early sermons which has had the good fortune to be embalmed in type. But though first printed, it was not the first delivered. In 1750, John Entick, afterward the editor of an edition of Anderson's Constitutions, delivered a sermon at Walbrook, England, entitled The free and Accepted Mason Described. The text on this occasion was from Acts xxviu, 22, and had some significance in reference to the popular character of the Order. "But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest; for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against." Entiek preached several other sermons, which were printed.

From that time, both in England and the United States of America, the sermon became a very usual part of the public celebration of a Masonic festival. One preached at Neweastle-upon-Tyne, in 1775, is in its very title a sermon of itself: "The Basis of Freemasonry displayed; or, an Attempt to show that the general Principles of true Religion, genuine Virtue, and sound Morality are the noble Foundations on which this renowned Society is established: Being a Sermon preached in Newcastle, on the Festival of Saint John the Evangelist, 1775, by Brother Robert Green."

In 1799, the Rev. Jethro Inwood published a volume of Sermons, in which are expressed and enforced the religious, moral, and political virtues of Freemasonry, preached upon several occasions bed ore the Provincial Grand Officers and other Brethren in the Counties of Kent and Essez. In 1849 Brother Spencer published an edition of this work, enriched by the valuable notes of Doctor Oliver.

In 1801 the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge and Grand Chapter of Massachusetts, published at Charlestown, Massachusetts, a volume of Discourses delivered on Public Occasions, illustrating the Principles, displaying the Tendency, and vindicating the Design of Freenssonr1y. This work has also been annotated in a new edition by Doctor Oliver, and republished in his Golden Remains of Early Masonic Writers. During this nineteenth century there has been an abundance of single sermons preached and published, but for a long period no other collected volume of any by one and the same author has been given to the public since those of Doctor Harris. Yet the fact that annually in Great Britain and America hundreds of sermons in praise or in defense of Freemasonry are delivered from Christian pulpits, is a valuable testimony given by the clergy to the purity of the Institution. There is a famous medal in existence bearing a message of such dignity and force that it has well been called a Masonic sermon and is known by that name on the Continent of Europe. A splendid specimen of this medal with its forty-one beautiful lines of engraving is in the possession of Brother Thomas T. Thorp of Leicester, England, where it was examined for the purpose of description here.

This is a bronze medal representing on one side a serpent biting a file and having around the border the words La Mac vivra, Dieu le veut. Gr. . or. . de Belgique 5838, meaning Masonry will live, God wills it. Grand Orient of Belgium, 5838. This medal was struck in consequence of an interdict pronounced against the Masonic Order by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Mechlin in December, 1838, which however had no effect unless to increase the prosperity of the Fraternity and to revive the loyalty of those whose interest had waned. The inscription on the reverse of this medal is known as the Masonic Sermon.

Here it is:

Masonic conduct is to adore the Grand Architect of the Universe . Love thy neighbor: do no evil: do good: suffer man to speak: The worship most acceptable to the Grand Architect of the Universe consists of good morals and to the practice of all the virtues

Do good for the love of goodness itself alone:

Ever keep thy soul in a state so pure as to appear worthily before the presence of the Grand Architect, who is God:

Love the good, succor the weak, fly from the wicked, but hate no one: Speak seriously with the great, and prudently with thy equals, sincerely with thy friends, pleasantly with the little ones, tender with the poor: Do not flatter thy Brother, that is treason:

If thy Brother flatter thee, beware that he doth not corrupt thee: Listen always to the voice of conscience

Be a father to the poor: each sigh drawn from them by thy hard-heartedness will increase the number of maledictions which will fall upon thy head:

Respect the stranger on his journey and assist him: his person is sacred to thee:

Avoid quarrels, forestall insults: Ever keep the right on thy side: Respect Woman, never abuse her weakness: die rather than dishonor her: If the Grand Architect hath given thee a son, be thankful, but tremble at the trust He hath confided to thee: be to that Child the image of Divinity: until he is ten years old let him fear thee: until he is twenty let him love thee and until death let him respect thee: until he is ten years old be his master, until twenty his father and until death his friend: aim to give him good principles rather than elegant manners, that he may hare enlightened rectitude, and not a frivolous elegance: make of him an honest man rather than a man of dress: If thou blushes at thy condition it is pride: Consider that it is not the position which honors or degrades thee, but the manner in which thou dost fill it: Read and profit, see and imitate, reflect and labor: Do all for the benefit of thy Brethren, that is working for thyself: Be Content in all places, at all times, and with all things: Rejoice in justice, despise iniquity, suffer without murmuring: Judge not lightly the conduct of men, blame little, and praise still less: It is for the Grand Architect of the Universe who sews the heart to value His work.

• SELECT MASTER

The Ninth Degree in the American Rite, and the last of the two conferred in a Council of Royal and Select Masters. Its officers are a Thrice Illustrious Grand Master, Illustrious Hiram of Tyre, Principal Conductor of the Works, Treasurer, Recorder, Captain of the Guards, Conductor of the Council, and Steward. The first three represent the three Grand Masters at the building of Solomon's Temple. The Symbolic colors are black and red, the former significant of secrecy, silence, and darkness; The latter of fervency and zeal. A Council is supposed to consist of neither more nor less than twenty-seven; but a smaller number, if not less than nine, is competent to proceed to work or business The candidate, when initiated, is said to the "chosen as a Select Master." The historical object of the Degree is to Commemorate the deposit of an important secret or treasure which, after the preliminary preparations, is said to have been made by Hiram Abif. The place of meeting represents a Secret vault beneath the Temple.

A controversy has sometimes arisen among ritualists as to whether the Degree of Select Master should precede or follow that of Royal Master in the order of conferring. But the arrangement now existing, by which the Royal Master is made the First and the Select Master the Second Degree of Cryptic Masonry, has been very generally accepted, and this for the best of reasons. It is true that the circumstances referred to in the Degree of Royal Master occurred during a period of time which lies between the death of the Chief Builder of the Temple and the completion of the edifice, while those referred to in the Degree of Select Master occurred anterior to the Builder's death. Hence, in the order of time, the events commemorated in the Select Master's Degree took place anterior to those which are related in the Degree of Royal Master; although in Masonic sequence the latter Degree is conferred before the former. This apparent anachronism is, however, reconciled by the explanation that the secrets of the Select Master's Degree were not brought to light until long after the existence of the Royal Master's Degree had been known and recognized.

In other words, to speak only from the traditional point of view, Select Masters had been designated, had performed the task for which they had been Selected, and had closed their labors, without ever being openly recognized as a class in the Temple of Solomon.

The business in which they were engaged was a secret one. Their occupation and their very existence, according to the legend, were unknown ta the great body of the Craft in the first Temple. The Royal Master's Degree, on the contrary, as there was no reason for concealment, was publicly conferred and acknowledged during the latter part of the construction of the Temple of Solomon; whereas the Degree of Select Master, and the important incident on which it was founded, are not supposed to have been revealed to the Craft until the building of the Temple of Zerubbabel. Hence the Royal Master's Degree should always be conferred anterior to that of the Select Master.

The proper jurisdiction under which these Degrees should be placed, whether under Chapters and to be conferred preparatory to the Royal Arch Degree or under Councils and to be conferred after it, has excited discussion The former usage has prevailed in Maryland and Virginia, but the latter in all the other States. There is no doubt that these degrees belonged originally to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and were conferred, as honorary Degrees by the Inspectors of that Rite. This authority and jurisdiction the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the Rite continued to claim until the year 1870; although, through negligence, the Councils of Royal and Select Masters in some of the States had been placed under the control of independent Jurisdictions called Grand Councils. Like all usurped authority, however, this claim of the State Grand Councils does not seem to have ever been universally admitted or to have been very firmly established.

Repeated attempts have been made to take the Degrees out of the hands of the Councils and to place them in the Chapters, there to be conferred as preparatory to the Royal Arch. The General Grand Chapter, in the Triennial Session of 1847, adopted a resolution granting this permission to all Chapters in States where no Grand Councils exist. But, seeing the manifest injustice and inexpediency of such a measure, at the following session of 1850 it refused to take any action on the subject of these Degrees. In 1853 it disclaimed all control over them, and forbade the Chapters under its jurisdiction to confer them. As far as regards the interference of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, that question was set at rest in 1870 by the Mother Council, which at its session at Baltimore, formally relinquished all further control over them.

• SEMELIUS

An officer in the Sixth Degree of the Modern French Rite, known as the strand Master of Despatches.

• SEMESTER

The mot de semestre, or semi-annual word, is used only in France. Every six months a secret word is communicated by the Grand Orient to all the Lodges under its jurisdiction. This custom was introduced October 28, 1773, during the Grand Mastership of the Duke of Chartres, to enable him the better to control the Lodges, and to afford the members a means whereby they could recognize the members who were not constant in their attendance, and also those Freemasons who either belonged to an unrecognized Rite, or who were not affiliated with any Lodge. The Chapters of the advanced Degrees receive a word annually from the Grand Orient for the same purpose. This, with the password, is given to the Tiler on entering the Temple.

• SENATORIAL CHAMBER

When the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite meets in the Thirty-third Degree, it is said to meet in its Senatorial Chamber.

• SENESCHAL

An officer found in some of the higher Degrees, as in the Thirty-second of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, where his duties are similar to those of a Warden of a Lodge, he acting as the deputy of the presiding officer. The title is derived from the old German senne, meaning house, and schalk, servant. The Seneschals in the Middle Ages were the lieutenants of the Dukes and other great feudatories, and took charge of the castles of their masters during their absence.

• SENIOR DEACON

See Deacon

• SENIOR ENTERED APPRENTICE

In the ritual of the early part of the eighteenth century the Senior and Junior Entered Apprentices acted in the place of the Deacons, which offices were then unknown. The Senior Entered Apprentice was placed in the south, and his duty there was "to hear and receive instructions, and to welcome strange Brethren" (see Junior Entered Apprentice).

• SENIOR WARDEN

The second officer in a Symbolic Lodge. He presides over the Craft during the hours of labor, as the Junior does during the hours of refreshment, and in the absence of the Master he performs the duty of that officer (see Wardens).

• SENSES, FIVE

See Five Senses

• SENSES, SEVEN

See Man

• SENTINEL

An officer in a Royal Arch Chapter, in a council of Knights of the Red Cross, and in a Commandery of Knights Templar, whose duties are similar to those of a Tiler in a Symbolic Lodge. In some Bodies the word Janitor has been substituted for Sentinel, but the change is hardly a good one. Janitor is usually applied to the porter of a collegiate institution, and has no old Masonic authority.

• SEPHIROTH

The Hebrew word is a plural noun, the singular being Sephira. Buxtorf (Talmudic Lexicon) says the word means numerations, from Saphar, to number; but the Cabalistic writers generally give it the signification of splendors, from Saphiri, splendid. The account of the creation and arrangement of the Sephiroth forms the most important portion of the secret doctrine of the Cabalists, and has been adopted and referred to in many of the high philosophic Degrees of Freemasonry. Some acquaintance with it, therefore, seems to be necessary to the Freemason who desires to penetrate into the more abstruse arcana of his Order (see Cabala).

• SEPHORA

Wife of Moses, and daughter of Raguel or Jethro, Priest of Midian. Mentioned in the Fourth Degree of the French Rite of Adoption.

• SEPTENARY

The number Seven, which see.

• SEPULCHER

The spirit of gratitude has from the earliest period led men to venerate the tombs in which have been deposited the remains of their bene. factors In all of the ancient religions there were sacred tombs to which worship was paid. The tombs of the prophets, preserved by the Israelites, gave testimony to their reverence for the memory of these holy personages. After the advent of Christianity the same sentiment of devotion led the pilgrims to visit the Holy Land, that they might kneel at what was believed to be the sepulcher of their Lord. In many of the churches of the Middle Ages there was a particular place near the altar called the Sepulcher which was used at Easter for the performance of solemn rites coromel1lorative of the Savior's resurrection. This custom still prevails in some of the churches on the Continent. In Templar Freemasonry, which is professedly a Christian system, the Sepulcher forms a part of the arrangements of a Commandery. In England, the sepulcher is within the Asylum, and in front of the Eminent Commander. In the United States of America it is placed without; and the scenic representation observed in every well-regulated and properly arranged Commandery furnishes a most impressive and pathetic ceremony.

• SEPULCHER, KNIGHT OF THE HOLY

See Knight of the Holy Sepulcher

• SERAPHIM

The Hebrew word is the singular form of the word is Seraph, signifying burning, fiery. Celestial beings in attendance upon Jehovah, mentioned by Isaiah (vi, 2-7). Similar to the Cherubim, having the human form, face, voice, two hands, and two feet, but six wings, with four of which they cover their faces and feet—as a sign of reverence— while with two they fly. Their specific office is to sing the praises of the Holy One, and convey messages from heaven to earth.

• SERAPHIM, ORDER OF

A Swedish Rite, instituted in 1334, revived in 1748. The number of knights, exclusive of the royal family, was twenty-four.

• SERAPIS, MYSTERIES OF

See Egyptian Mysteries

• SERPENT

As a symbol, the serpent obtained a prominent place in all the ancient initiations and religions Among the Egyptians it was the symbol of Divine Wisdom when extended at length, and the serpent with his tail in his mouth was an emblem of eternity. The winged globe and serpent symbolized their triune deity. In the ritual of Zoroaster, the serpent was a symbol of the universe. In China, the ring between two serpents was the symbol of the world governed by the power and wisdom of the Creator. The same device is several times repeated on the Isiae Table. Godfrey Higgins (Anacalypsis i, pare 521) says that, from the faculty which the serpent possessed of renewing itself, without the process of generations as to outward appearance, by annually casting its skin, it became, like the Phenix, the emblem of eternity; but he denies that it ever represented, even in Genesis, the evil principle.

Faber's theory of the symbolism of the serpent, as set forth in his work on the Origin of Pagan Idolatry, is ingenious. He says that the ancients in part derived their idea of the serpent from the first tempter, and hence it was a hieroglyphic of the evil principle. But as the deluge was thought to have emanated from the evil principle, the serpent thus became a symbol of the deluge.

He also represented the good principle; an idea borrowed from the winged Seraphim which was blended with the Cherubim who guarded the tree of life—the Seraphim and Cherubim being sometimes considered as identical; and besides, in Hebrew, lot means both a seraph and a serpent. But as the good principle was always male and female, the male serpent represented the Great Father, Adam or Noah, and the female serpent represented the ark or world, the microcosm and the macrocosm. Hence the serpent represented the perpetually renovated world, and as such was used in all the Mysteries.

Doctor Oliver brings his peculiar views to the interpretation, and says that in Christian Freemasonry the serpent is an emblem of the fall and the subsequent redemption of man. In Ancient Craft Masonry, however, the serpent does not occur as a symbol. In the Templar and in the Philosophy Degrees—such as the Knight of the Brazen Serpent, where the serpent is combined with the cross—it is evidently a symbol of Christ; and thus the symbolism of these Degrees is closely connected with that of the Rose Croix.

• SERPENT AND CROSS

A symbol used in the Degrees of Knights Templar and Knight of the Brazen Serpent. The cross is a tau cross T. and the serpent is twined around. Its origin is found in Numbers xxi, 9, where it is said, "Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole." The Hebrew word Nes, here translated a pole, literally means a standard, or something elevated on high as a signal, and may be represented by a across as well as by a pole. Indeed, Justin Martvr calls it a cross.

• SERPENT, KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN

See Knight of the Brazen Serpent

• SERPENT WORSHIP

In ancient times, the serpent was an object of adoration in almost all nations. It was, in fact, one of the earliest deviations from the true system, and in almost all the ancient rites we find some allusion to the serpent. It was worshiped in India, Egypt, Phenicia, Babylonia, Greece, and Italy. Indeed, so widely was this worship distributed, presenting everywhere so many similar features, that it is not surprising that it has been regarded by some writers as the primitive religion of man. And so long did it continue, that in the Sect of Ophites — from the Greek word Ophis, meaning a Serpent - it became one of the earliest heresies of the church. In some nations, as the Egyptians, the serpent was the representative of the good principle; but in most of them it was the emblem of the evil principle.

• SERVIA or SERBIA

Formerly a kingdom of the Balkan Peninsula, in southeastern Europe, now combined with Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Slovenia, and Voyvodina to form Jugoslavia (see Austria Hungary and Czecho-Slouakia). Two Lodges warranted by the Grand Orient of Italy were working in Belgrade in 1885. A governing body for Serbia was opened in 1912 at a Convention beginning on May 10 and lasting for thirteen days. In 1914 it controlled four Lodges whose membership totaled less than 100 in all.

• SERVING BRETHREN

Freemasons whose duty it is to serve the Lodge as Tilers, waiters at the Lodge table, and to perform other menial services, are called in European Lodges Serving Brethren. They are not known in the United States of America, but were long recognized as a distinct class in England and on the Continent. In 1753 the Grand Lodge of England adopted a regulation for their initiation, which, slightly modified is still in force. By it every Lodge is empowered to initiate without charge Serving Brethren, who cannot, however, become members of the Lodge, although they may join another.

In military Lodges private soldiers may be received as Serving Brethren. On the Continent, at one time, a separate and preliminary form of reception, with peculiar signs, etc., was appropriated to those who were initiated as Serving Brethren, and they were not permitted to advance beyond the first Degree; which, however, worked no inconvenience, as all the business and refreshment of the Lodges were done at that time in the Entered Apprentice's Degree. The regulation for admitting Serving Brethren arose from the custom of Lodges meeting at taverns; and as at that period labor and refreshment were intermixed, the waiters for the tavern were sometimes required to enter the room while the Lodge was in session, and hence it became necessary to qualify them for such service by making them Freemasons. In France they are called Freres Servants; in Germany, Dienenden Brüder.

The Knights Templar had a class called Serving Brothers, who were not, however, introduced into the Order until it had greatly increased in wealth and numbers. The form of their reception varied very slightly from that of the Knights; but their habit was different, being hlsek They were designated for the performance of various services inside or outside of the Order. Many rich and well-born men belonged to this class. They were permitted to take part in the election of a Grand Master. The Treasurer of the Order was always a Serving Brother. Of these Serving Brothers there were two kinds: Servants at Arms and Artificers. The former were the most highly esteemed; the latter being considered a very inferior class, except the flrzllorers, who were held, on account of the importance of their occupation, in higher estimation.

• SETH

It is a theory of some Masonic writers that the principles of t he Pure or Primitive Freemasonry were preserved in the race of Seth, which had always kept separate from that of Cain, but that after the Flood they became corrupted by a secession of a portion of the Sethites, who established the Spurious Freemasonry of the Gentiles. This theory has been very extensively advanced by Doctor Oliver in all his works. The pillars erected by Seth to preserve the principles of the arts and sciences are mentioned by Josephus. But although the Old Constitutions speak of Seth, they ascribe the erection of these pillars to the children of Lamedh. But in the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry the erection is attributed to Enoch (see Enoch).

• SETHOS

In 1731, the Abbe Terrasson published at Paris a work entitled Sethos histotre ou vie tirée files monuments, anecdotes de l'ancienne Egypte. It has passed through a great many editions and has been translated into German and English. This work is a romantic history, life taken from the monuments, anecdotes of ancient Egypt. Under the form of fiction it contains an admirable description of the initiation into the ancient Egyptian Mysteries. The labors and researches of Terrasson have been very freely used by Lenoir, Clavel, Oliver, and other writers on the ancient initiations.

• SETTING-MAUL

A wooden hammer used by Operative Masons to set the stones in their proper positions. It is in Speculative Freemasonry a symbol, in the Third Degree, reminding us of the death of the builder of the Temple, which is said to have been effected by this instrument. In some Lodges it is improperly used by the Master as his gavel, from which it totally differs in form and in Symbolic signification. The gavel is a symbol of order and decorum; the setting-maul, of death by violence.

The most famous of Setting Mauls is one treasured by the Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2, United Grand Lodge of England. It once belonged to Sir Christopher Wren, and was by him presented to the Lodge of which he was a member (as was also his son after him). In a written Lodge record called Book E, in what there is said to be a copy of an old Minute Book, an item dated March 18, 1722, refers to "the Old Mallet used at laying the foundation stone of St. Paul's Cathedral." In the Lodge Inventory of 1778 is a record: "the Mallet with which Sir Christopher Wren laid the foundation Stone of St. Paul's Cathedral." In 1827 the Duke of Sussex, Grand Master, caused an engraved silver plate to be affixed to it, reading: "that this is the same Mallet with which his Majesty King Charles the 2nd leveled the foundation Stone of St. Paul's Cathedral A. L. 1677, A. D. 1673, and vv as presented to the Old Lodge of Saint Paul now the Lodge of Antiquity acting by immemorial Constitution by Brother Sir Christopher Wren R.W.D.G.H., W. M. of this Lodge, and Architect of that Edifice." (The date should have been 1675.

A number of textual difficulties center in these and other references to Sir Christopher Ren; they are analyzed by Bros. Rylands and Firebrace in their two-volume Pvecord of the Lodge of Antiquity, No. ma. Bro. Albert F. Calvert devotes nine pages to Wren in his Title Grand Lodge of England, beginning at page 45. Gould devoted some fifty pages of his History to trying to prove that Wren was not a Masons had never been a member of Antiquity, etc.; the amount of space is out of proportion to the subject, and was turned to waste, at least was neutralized, by Bro. Ryland's discovery of Antiquity MSS. which Gould had no knowledge of.)

It is a common fact that the Gavel is one of the Working Tools, and thereby a major symbol, whereas the Maul is but one of many emblems, though the Gavel is almost never mentioned in the older records (Operative Masons used a stone axe) and the Maul often is. The Maul was a thick-bodied mallet, sometimes spherical in shape, sometimes square, by which a finished stone was tapped into place; it came for that reason to stand for the completing of a piece of work. (It is also curious that the Plumb, Square, Level, and Gage, or ruler, were called Working Tools when they were not tools but instruments.)

It is illuminating to assemble the whole set of symbols and emblems having to do with the stone in a single system: the Ashlar. the instruments for measuring it, the tools for cutting it, the maul for putting it in place, etc., for when thus assembled one tool throws light upon the other. When that is done it becomes clear that in the Third Degree there are in reality two mauls: ones a working tool, in the form of an emblem, which explains itself; the second, a weapon. In consequence, there are two separate symbolisms.

• SETTING SUN

It was the duty of the Senior Wardens to pay and dismiss the Craft at the close of day, when the sun sinks in the West; so now the Senior \Narden is said in the Lodge to represent the pettily sun.

• SEVEN STARS

In the Tracing-Board of the Seventeenth Degree, or Knight of the East and West, is the representation of a man clothed in a white robe, with a golden girdle round his waist, his right hand extended, and surrounded with seven stars. The Seventeenth is an apocalyptic Degree, and this symbol is taken from the passage in Revelation (i, 16), "and he had in his right hand seven stars." It is a symbol of the seven churches of Asia.

• SEVENTY YEARS OF CAPTIVITY

This period must be computed from the defeat of the Egyptians at Carchemish, in the same year that the prophecy was given, when Nebuchadnezzar reduced the neighboring nations of Syria and Palestine, as well as Jerusalem, under his subjection At the end of seventy years, on the accession of Cyrus, an end was put to the Babylonish monarchy.

• SHADDAI, EL

One of the names of God in Hebrew. In Exodus vi, 3, the word translated God Almighty is, in the original, Shaddai, me; it is there fore the name by which he was known to the Israel ites before he communicated the Tetragrammaton to Moses. The word has been credited to a root meaning to overthrow, and signifies All-powerful Omnipotent. The prefix El is usually understood as the Ruler or Mighty One, but may have mainly a poetical use when compounded as here with a word of even greater power.

• SHALAL SHALOM ABI

A Hebrew phrase, Diripuit pacem patri. A covered word in the Fifteenth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SHALASH ESRIM

A Hebrew expression, Derby tit, meaning twenty-three, and refers to a day in the month Adar, noted in the Sixteenth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SHAMIR

King Solomon is said, in a Rabbinical legend, to have used the worm Shamir as an instrument for building the Temple. The legend is that Moses engraved the names of the twelve tribes on the stones of the breastplate by means of the blood of the worm Shamir, whose solvent power was so great that it could corrode the hardest substances. When Solomon was about to build the Temple of stones without the use of any metallic implement, he was desirous of obtaining this potent blood; but the knowledge of the source whence Moses had derived it had been lost by the lapse of time.

Solomon enclosed the chick of a bird, either an ostrich or a hoopoe, in a crystal vessel, and placed a sentinel to watch it. The parent bird, finding it impossible to break the vessel with her bill so as to gain access to the young one, flew to the desert, and returned with the miraculous worm, which, by means of its blood, soon penetrated the prison of glass, and liberated the chick. By a repetition of the process, the King of Israel at length acquired a sufficiency of the dissolving blood to enable him to work upon the stones of the Temple.

It is supposed that the legend is based on a corruption of the word Smiris, the Greek for emery, which was used by the antique engravers in their works and medallions, and that the name Shamir is merely the Hebrew form of the Greek word.

• SEVEN

In every system of antiquity there is a frequent reference to this number, showing that the veneration for it proceeded from some common cause. It is equally a sacred number in the Gentile as in the Christian religion. Doctor Oliver says that this can scarcely be ascribed to any event, except it be the institution of the Sabbath. Godfrey Higgins thinks that the peculiar circumstance, perhaps accidental, of the number of the days of the week coinciding exactly with the number of the planetary bodies probably procured for it its character of sanctity. The Pythagoreans called it a perfect number, because it was made up of three and four, the triangle and the square, which are the two perfect figures. They called it also a virgin number, and without mother, comparing it to Minerva, who was a motherless virgin, because it cannot by multiplication produce any number within ten, as twice two does four, and three times three does nine; nor can any two numbers, by their multiplication, produce it.

It is singular to observe the important part occupied by the number seven in all the ancient systems There were, for instance, seven ancient planets, seven Pleiades, and seven Hyades; seven altars burned continually before the god Mithras; the Arabians had seven holy temples; the Hindus supposed the world to be enclosed within the compass of seven peninsulas the Goths had seven deities, namely, the Sun, the Moon, Tuisco, Woden, Thor, Friga, and Seatur, from whose names are derived our days of the week; in the Persian Mysteries were seven spacious caverns, through which the aspirant had to pass; in the Gothic Mysteries, the candidate met with seven obstructions, which were called the Road of the Seven Stages; and, finally, sacrifices were always considered as most efficacious when the victims were seven in number.

Muell of the Jewish liturgy was governed by this number, and the etymology of the word shows its sacred import, for the radical meaning of the Hebrew word shabang, is, says Parkhurst, sufficiency or fulness. The Hebrew idea, therefore, like the Pythagorean, is that of perfection. To both the seven was a perfect number. Again: 7, means to swear, because oaths were confirmed either by seven witnesses, or by seven victims offered in sacrifice, as we read in the Covenant of Abraham and Abimelech (Genesis xxi, 28). Hence, there is a frequent recurrence to this number in the Scriptural history.

The Sabbath was the seventh day; Noah received seven days' notice of the commencement of the deluge, and was commanded to select clean beasts and fowls by sevens; seven persons accompanied him into the ark; the ark rested on Mount Ararat in the seventh month; the intervals between despatching the dove were, each time, seven days; the walls of Jericho were encompassed seven days by seven priests, bearing seven rams' horns; Solomon was seven years building the Temple, which was dedicated in the seventh month, and the festival lasted seven days; the candlestick in the tabernacle consisted of seven branches; and, finally, the tower of Babel was said to have been elevated seven stories before the dispersion.

Seven is a sacred number in Masonic symbolism. It has always been so. In the earliest instructions of the eighteenth century it was said that a Lodge required seven to make it perfect; but the only explanation to be found in any of those ceremonies of the sacredness of the number is the seven liberal arts and sciences, which, according to the old Legend of the Craft, were the foundation of Freemasonry. In modern ritualism the symbolism of seven has been transferred from the First to the Second Degree, and there it is made to refer only to the seven steps of the Winding Stairs; but the symbolic seven is to be found diffused in a hundred ways over the whole Masonic system. The sun was naturally the great central planet of the ancient seven, and is ever represented as the central light of the seven in the branched candlestick. Of the days of the week one was known as Sol's day, or Sunday, and as the Sun was the son of Saturn, he was ushered in by his father Saturn, or Saturdays whom he superseded.

The Jews got their Sabbath from the Babylonians about 700 B.C. (Ancient Faiths, page 863) also see Philo Judoeus, Josephus, and Clement of Alexandria, while Sol's day dates from time immemorial, and was always a sacred one. In a phallic sense, when the sun has been in conjunction with the moon, he only leaves Luna after impregnation, and as Forlong, in his Rivers of Life, expresses it, "the young sun is that faint globe we so often see in the arms of the new moon," which is in gestation with the sun.

The occult meaning of the word Mi-mi perhaps is here revealed, as mentioned in First Kings (xviii, 97), being defined Firewater. Mi is the name of the sun, and as well signifies gold. It is designated in the musical scale, and is also the name of fire in Burmese, Siamese, and cognates tongues, as mentioned by Forlong in treating of the Early Faiths of Western Asia (volume ii, page 65). Next to the sun in beauty and splendor the moon leads all the hosts of heaven. And the Occidental, as well as the Oriental, nations were wrongly moved in their imaginations by the awful majesty, the solemn silence, and the grandeur of that brilliant body progressing nightly through the starry vault: from the distant plains of India to ancient Egypt, and even those far-off lands where the Incas ruled, altars were erected to the worship of the Moon. On every seventh day the moon assumed a new phase, which gave rise to festivals to Luna being correspondingly celebrated; the day so set apart was known as Moon-day, or the second day of the week, that following Sun-day. "The Moon, whose phases unasked and appointed their holy days" (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book i, chapter 28) . In the Hebrew, Syrian, Persian, Phenician, Chaldean, and Saxon, the word Seven signifies full or complete, and every seventh day after the first quarter the moon is complete in its change. In all countries the moon is best known under the beautiful figure of the unveiling Queen of Heaven.

The relative values of Seven in the musical scale and in the ancient planetary formula are as follows:

Si ........ Moon .......... Silver

Ut ....... Mercury ...... Quicksilver

Re ...... Venus .......... Copper

Mi ...... Sun ............. Gold

Fa ...... Mars ........... Iron

Sol ..... Jupiter ..........Tin

La ...... Saturn ......... Lead

The eminent professor of music, Carl Bergstein, in connection herewith, furnishes the information that Cuido Aretinus, Monk, in the eleventh century, the great reformer of music, invented the staff, several keys, and the names at, re, mi, pa, sol, la, si; they being taken from a prayer to Saint John to protect the voice, running thus:

Ut queant laxis ..... Resonare fibris

Mira gestorum ..... Pamuli tuorum

Solve polluti ........ Labii reatum,

............................. Sancte Johannes

The literal translation of which vould be rendered:

For that (or to enable) With expanded breast

Shy servants are able to sing the praise of Thy

Deeds, forgive the pollute lips the sins uttered.

The syllable at has since been changed for the more satisfactory do. In the vear 1562 there was printed at Leipzic a work entitled Heptalogium Virgilii Salsburgensis, in honor of the number Seven.

It consists of seven parts each embracing seven divisions. In 1624 appeared in London a curious work on the subject of numbers, bearing the following title: The Secret of Numbers according to Theological, Arithmetical, geometrical, and Harmonical Computation; drawn for the better part, out of those Ancients, as well as Neoteriques. Pleasing to read, profitable to understand, opening themselves to the capacities of both learned and unlearned; being no other than a key to lead men to any doctrinal knowledge whatsoever. In the ninth chapter the author has given many notable opinions from learned men, to prove the excellency of the number Seven. "First, it neither begets nor is begotten, according to the saying of Philo. Some numbers, indeed, within the compass of ten, beget, but are not begotten; and that is the unarie. Others are begotten, but beget not, as the octonarie. Only the septenaries have a prerogative above them all, they neither beget nor are they begotten. This is its first divinity or perfection. Secondly, this is a harmonical number, and the well and fountain of that fair and lovely Sigamma, because it includeth within itself all manner of harmony.

Thirdly, it is a theological number, consisting of perfection. Fourthly, because of its compositure; for it is compounded of the first two perfect members equal and unequal, three and four; for the number trio, consisting of repeated unity, which is no number, is not perfect. Now every one of these being excellent of themselves, as hath been demonstrated, how can this number be but far more excellent, consisting of them all, and participating, as it were, of all their excellent virtues?"

Hippocrates says that the septenary member, by its occult virtue, tends to the accomplishment of all things, is the dispenser of life and fountain of all its changes; and, like Shakespeare, he divides the life of man into seven ages. In seven months a child may be born and live, and not before. Anciently a child was not named before seven days, not being accounted fully to have life before that periodical day. The teeth spring out in the seventh month, and are renewed in the seventh year, when infancy is changed into childhood. At thrice seven years the faculties are developed, manhood commences, and we become legally competent to all civil acts; at four times seven man is in full possession of his strength; at five times seven he is fit for the business of the world; at six times seven he becomes grave and wise, or never; at seven times seven he is in his apogee, and from that time he decays; at eight times seven he is in his first elimaeterie; at nine times seven, or sixty-three, he is in his grand climacteric, or years of danger; and ten times seven, or threescore years and ten, has, by the Royal Prophet, been pronounced the natural period of human life.

Shakespeare's seven ages are lines in the play of As You Like It (act ii, scene 7) as follows:

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant Mervling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last seene of all That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

• SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM

Famous playwright and poet, born at Stratford-on-Avon, England, on April 22 or 23,1564; died, April 23, 1616, at Stratford. Brother Henry F. Evans has in the Rob Morris Bulletin of Denver, March, 1918, collected a number of items from the writings of Shakespeare having some bearing on words and phrases common among Freemasons. An article, "Was William Shakespeare a Freemason," by Robert I. Clegg, appeared in the Builder, February, 1910, examined among many others certain references to the letter G. in Richard III i, 1; the grip and whisper, King John iv, 2; the North for darkness and for evil, Henry VI v, 3, Henry IV ii, 4, Merry Wives of Windsor ii, 2; the plant that discovered the grave and thus revealed the murder of Polydorus to the patient seeker, Aeneas, is in Virgil, book iii, 22, and in Macbeth iii, 4, we have similar testimony that murder will out though stones must move and trees speak. These at least show the age of various ritualistic expressions and the advisability of carefully weighing past usefulness before making changes as is sometimes advised with what is now not so familiar in common usage as formerly.

• SHARESPEARE, WILLIAMS AND MASONRY

There is no obvious connection between Masonic research and Shakespearean research; Freemasonry as a Fraternity does not appear in the plays, and there is no indication that Shakespeare belonged to any one of the Time Immemorial Lodges. But out of Shakespearean research and theory arose two or three theories which became connected with the Craft, and Masonic research was thereby drawn into "the Shakespearean question".

1. There was the theory that Bacon, not the actor Shakespeare. had written the plays at about the same time, and in consequence, there was the theory that Bacon had organized a secret society and that this was the origin of Freemasonry. The discovery of new documents of unquestioned authenticity since Delia Bacon launched "the Baconian Hypothesis' has completely once and for all, destroyed any possibility of the truth of it.

These documents prove that Shakespeare lived for some thirteen years in London, first in the neighborhood of Blackfriars Theater, then in the neighborhood of the Globe Theater; that he was actor, manager, a re-writer and a writer of plays, etc.; that the principal characters in the plays were adapted to fit the personality, physique, and talents in Shakespeare's company; the names and number of these players are known, etc.; Bacon's name nowhere appears in these records, or any representative of Bacon or any of Bacon's ideas. Shakespeare is proved to have lived neighbor to Decker and Jonson for years, which gives their testimony to his authorship the weight of firsthand knowledge. The author of the plays indubitable was William Shakespeare of Stratford; therefore the flounder of any Baconian secret society was not their author. Meanwhile no evidence of any connection between Bacon and Freemasonry has been discovered, on the other hand a massive accumulation of evidence proves that Freemasonry was at work centuries before Bacon was born.

2. Shakespeare was living in London when the commerce, trade, and crafts were still divided among chartered City Companies; these Companies comprised the framework of London, and contributed most of the Lord Mayors for about six centuries In the manuscript of a play entitled "Sir Thomas More" are three pages in Shakespeare's handwriting. This material has a peculiar interest for Freemasons for a reason that must be explained:

One of the rules of the City Companies (the Mason Company among them) gave London workmen monopolistic control of work in London. Any non-London workman brought in was called a "stranger." It might happen under extraordinary circumstances that an exception would be made in favor of a "stranger' but if not it was considered that any work he might do was "bootlegged," or "clandestine"—Scottish Masons would have called them "cowans." The records of the Mason Company are interspersed with protests against and condemnations of "strangers" in the building crafts. Once in a while the members of a City Company might gather on the street to drive "strangers" out; these were called riots or mobs. It happens that the scene written into "Sir Thomas More" by Shakespeare for use on the stage concerned just such a "mob." In a speech for the character of Sir Thomas More he wrote a powerful denunciation of this mobbing in that overwhelming poetry which was uniquely his own.

3. One of the main supports of the anti-Shakespeare theory of authorship of the plays was the argument that a man from Stratford could not have possessed the encyclopedic knowledge revealed in them. This argument has lost its point. First, Shakespearean research has proved that Shakespeare lived and worked in the very focus of British government and learning, was a boon companion of scholars, met men from travels in distant countries, was received by the Queen, helped to receive the all-important Spanish Ambassador, produced plays in the Inns of the Temple, the center and home of British law, etc.

Second, it has proved that in writing a play he adhered as closely as possible to some volume by Plutarch, Holinshed, Malory, Montaigne, etc.; much of the erudition which went into the plays, and which has constituted the great puzzle, was therefore not his own erudition but belonged to the books he wed. If he introduced here and there some detail strikingly similar to a Masonic word or phrase, or custom it does not follow that he himself had any knowledge of the Craft. A Shakespeare Lodge constituted at Stratford expressly with the hope of proving Shakespeare to have been a Mason admitted its failure. Evidence may be discovered in the future; if it is it will be welcome; until it is, there are no grounds for believing that he ever entered a Lodge. As for his plays themselves their large themes are historical, political, military; architecture and the gilds have no place in them except as furnishing background for some detail or are mentioned in from passing auction.

Dr. Charles William Wallace, of the University of Nebraskan made in 1919 the discovery of the records of a trial in which Shakespeare was a witness and to one of which he attached his signature. He also discovered in the Record Office the exact location of the Globe Theater. Dr. Leslie Hotson, Haverford College, America, discovered a deed belonging to Shakespeare for a house near Blackfriars; and a subpoena issued to a set of persons who had made threats against a certain William Waytes in 1596, with William Shakespeare among five accused persons named. Shakespeare lampooned this Wayte's close friend Justice William Gardiner as Justice Swallow in two plays. The Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun discovered the copy of Holinshed which Shakespeare had used. Discoveries of records and correspondence in late years have cleared up the question of Shakespeare's religion. He spent his boyhood at the period when Roman Catholicism was being driven out of Stratford, and his father, the town's leading citizen, Mayor a number of terms, and until his last years a man of wealth, was the leader of the Protestants who stripped the Stratford Church of its images and other Popish trappings; his mother, on the other hand, was an Arden, a very old family, and famous for its devotion to the Roman Church; she was compelled by law to abandon her creed, but it is probable that she continued to cherish it in secret. Since Shakespeare was as much attached to one parent as to the other it is reasonable to believe that he had no strong inner attachment to either Protestantism or Romanism.

Moreover, Stratford had become not only Protestant but Puritan; since his had been a forced marriage, and since he had gone off to London to work in a theater, the Puritan circles at home could not have looked upon him with approval. He returned, however, a wealthy man, and for that reason was accepted back into respectability, though after his death when London actors arrived in Stratford with a bust to place at his tomb they were ill received, and given one day to leave the town because they belonged to a profession which the Puritans were determined to destroy.

(See Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, by Frayne Williams; E. P. Dutton & Co.; Stew York; 1941; 396 pages; abundant references Francis Bacon and his secret society. by Mrs. Pott. Speddings Life of Bacon. .Shakespeare: Creator of Freemasonry by Alfred Dodd; Slider & Co.; London.)

• SHARP INSTRUMENT 1

The emblematic use of a sharp instrument, as indicated in the instructions of the First Degree, is intended to be represented by a warlike weapon, the old rituals call it "a warlike instrumented such as a dagger or sword. The use of the point of a pair of compasses, as is sometimes improperly done, is an erroneous application of the symbol, which should not be tolerated in a properly conducted Lodge. The compasses are, besides, a symbol peculiar to the Third Degree.

• SHARP INSTRUMENT 2

The Minutes of the Lodge of Antiquity (one of "the Four Old Lodges") record that on March 26, 1834 "a poignard for the I. G. was given by Bro. R. W. Jennings ..." Prior to the Union there had been in general no protection of the door except by the Tiler, who stood outside, armed with a weapon, which, in Speculative Freemasonry, had symbolic purposes only yet was for those purposes inexorably wielded. The story of the sword in early Speculative Freemasonry is an interesting one—it is recommended to Masonic essayists. In the Eighteenth Century young blades wore a sword almost everywhere; sometimes even in Church (if they mere armigerous " or entitled to bear arms, Which commoners" were not permitted to do). Should Lodges permit swords to be worn in the Lodge Room? A weapon was out of place there. The young men insisted that they would; the Lodges insisted that they should not; Grand Lodge weakened once and gave permission, but at the end of a year recanted and withdrew permission; swords were left in the Anteroom. But it is probable that as a kind of compromise the Tiler, who was not only a "commoner" but of a lower order still, namely, a "servant," had to give over his ancient practice of carrying about the gentlemen's weapon, and took to wearing a poignard which was really a foreign weapon. When an Inner Guard was added to the Lodge officers after the Union of 1813 he also was armed, and also with what one Secretary wrote down as a "p - - - d. " In the course of time (at least in America) the Inner Guard (or Junior Deacon) went without even that weapon, and the now unlawful sword was returned to the Outer Guard, or Tiler.

What a visitor, or stranger, or a Candidate encountered at the Outer Door of the Lodge was not a door, but a sword! To outsiders the "sword" is a challenge and a warning; to members it is a guard and a protection. (The "border"—or boundary, or tees sellated edge of a Lodge room—is thus an actuality) There is no data to show when or why the symbolism of the Sharp Instrument was introduced, but it is a reasonable theory that it is a symbolical modification of the old custom in which the Tiler (or Outer Guard) guarded the Inner Door with his blade—certainly he never guarded it with a pair of compasses.

• SHASTER

Hindu word meaning instruction. Any book held more or less sacred among the Hindus, whether included in the Sruti or not. The Great Shasters comprise the Vedas, the Upavedas, and the Vedangas, with their appended works of learning, ineluding the Puranas, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata (see puranas, Ramaydna, and Mahabharata).

• SHASTRAS

The sacred book of the Hindus, which contains the dogmas of their religion and the ceremonies of their worship. It is a commentary on the Vedas, and consists of three parts: the moral law, the rites and ceremonies of the religion, and the distribution of the people into tribes. To the Hindu Freemason it would be the Greater Light and his Book of the Law, as the Bible is to his Christian Brother.

• SHEBA, QUEEN OF

In the Books of Kings and Chronicles (see First Kings x, 1-13, and Second Chrolliele3 ix, 1-12), we are told that "when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon coneerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions." Sheba, or Saba, is supposed to have been a province of Arabia Felix, situated to the south of Jerusalem. The Queen, whose visit is thus described, is spoken of nowhere else in Seripture. But the Jews and the Arabs, who gave her the name of Balkis, recite many traditions concerning her. The Masonic one will be found under the words Admiration, Sign of, which see.

• SHEBAT

The Hebrew word The fifth month of the Hebrew civil year, and corresponding with the months January and February, beginning with the new moon of the former.

• SHEKEL

In the Fourth or Mark Master's Degree, it is said that the value of a Mark is "a Jewish half-shekel of silver, or twenty-five cents in the curreney of this country." The shekel of silver was a weight of great antiquity among the Jews, its value being about a half-dollar. In the time of Solomon, as well as long before and long after, until the Babylonish exile, the Hebrews had no regularly stamped money, but generally used in traffic a currency which consisted of uncoiled shekels, which they weighed out to one another. The earliest specimens of the coined shekel which we know are of the coinage of Simon Maceabeus, issued about the year 144 B.C. Of these, we generally find on the obverse the sacred pot of manna, with the inscription, Shekel Israel, in the old Samaritan character; on the reverse, the rod of Aaron, having three buds, with the inscription, Jerushalem Kadoshah, or Jerusalem the Holy, in a similar character.

• SHEKINAH

The Hebrew word brad, derived from Shakan, meaning to dwell. A term applied by the Jews, especially in the Targums, to the divine glory which dwelt in the tabernacle and the Temple, and which was manifested by a visible cloud resting over the merey-seat in the Holy of Holies. It first appeared over the Ark when Moses consecrated the Tabernacle; and was afterward, upon the consecration of the Temple by Solomon, translated thither, where it remained until the destruction of that building.

The Shekinah disappeared after the destruction of the first Temple, and was not present in the second. Christie, in his learned treatise on the Worship of the Elements, says that "the loss of the Shekinah, that visible sign of the presence of the Deity, induced an early respeet for solar light as its substitute. " Now there is mueh that is signifieative of Masonic history in this brief sentence. The sun still remains as a prominent symbol in the Masonic system. It has been derived by the Masons from those old sunworshipers. But the idea of Masonic light is very different from their idea of solar light. The Shekinah was the symbol of the Divine glory; but the true glory of divinity is Truth, and Divine Truth is therefore the Shekinah of Freemasonry. This is symbolized by light, which is no longer used by us as a "substitute" for the Shekinah, or the Divine glory, but as its symbol—the physical expression of its essence.

• SHELUM LECKA

The password of the Order of Felicity. It is of Arabic root, signifying, Peace be with you! (see Selamu Aleikum).

• SHEM

The Name. The Jews in their sacred rites often designated God by the word Name, but they applied it only to him in his most exalted eharaeter as expressed by the Tetragrammaton, JEHOVAH. To none of the other titles of God, such as El, Eheyeh, or Adonai, do they apply the word. Thus, Shemchah Sadosh, Thy name is holy, means Thy name Jehovah is holy. To the Name thus exalted, in its reference to the Tetragrammaton, they applied many epithets, among which are the following used by the Talmudists, Shem shal arbang, the name of four, i.e., four letters, Shem hamjukad, the appropriated name, i.e., appropriated solely to God. Shem haggadol, the great name, and Shem hakkadosh, the holy name. To the Jew, as to the Freemason, this great and holy name was the symbol of all Divine truth. The Name was the true name, and therefore it symbolized and represented the true God.

• SHEM, HAM, JAPHETH

The three sons of Noah, who assisted him in the construction of the Ark of Safety, and henee they became significant words in the Royal Arch Degree according to the American system. The interpolation of Adoniram in the place of one of these names, which is sometimes met with, is a blunder of some modern ritual maker.

• SHEM HAMPHORASCH

A Hebrew expression, meaning the Separated Name. The Tetragrammaton is so called because, as Maimonides, in the More Nebukim, Guide of the Perplexed, says, all the names of God are derived from his works except the Tetragrammaton, which is called the separated name, because it is derived from the substance of the Creator, in which there is no participation of any other thing. That is to say, this name indicates the self-existent essence of God, which is something altogether within Himself, and separate from His works.

• SHEMITIC

One of the three historical divisions of religion—the other two being the Turanian and the Aryan—and embraces Mosaism, Christianity, the Eddaic Code, and Moslemism.

• SHERIFF

According to Brother Preston, the sheriff of a County possessed, before the Revival of 1717, a power later confined to Grand Masters. He says (Illustrations, page 182) that "A sufficient number of Masons met together within a certain district, with the consent of the Sheriff or chief magistrate of the place, were empowered, at this time, to make Masons, and practise the rites of Masonry without a warrant of Constitution."

This is confirmed by the following passage in the Cooke Manuscript (lines 901-12): "When the masters and fellows be forewarned and are come to such congregations, if need be, the Sheriff of the Country, or the Mayor of the City, or Aldermen of the Town in which such Congregation is holden, shall be fellow and soeiate to the master of the congregation in help of him against rebels and (for the) upbearing the right of the realm."

• SHERMAH, INSECT

See Insect Shermah

• SHERMAN, ROGER

One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, born at Newton, Massachusetts, April 19, 1721; died in New Haven, Connecticut, July 23, 1793. Was Judge, Superior Court, Connecticut, 1766; Treasurer, Yale University, 1765; Delegate, Continental Congress, 1774; Mayor, New Haven, 1784; United States Senator, 1791; member, Committee Drafting Declaration of Independence and Articles of Federation. He was made a Freemason just prior to the breaking out of the American Revolution (see New Age, April, 1924, and Masonic Presidents, Vice Presidents and Signers, by William L. Boyden).

• SHESHA

The seven-headed serpent floating in the eosmical ocean, upon which the throne of Brahrna rested.

• SHETHARBOZNAI

See Tatnai

• SHEWBREAD

The twelve loaves which were placed upon a table in the sanctuary of the Temple, and which were called the shewbread or bread of the presence, are represented among the paraphernalia of a Lodge of Perfection in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Bähr (Symbolik) says that the shew bread was a symbol of the bread of life—of the eternal life by which we are brought into the presence of Cod and know Him; an interpretation that is equally applicable to the Masonic symbolism.

• SHIBBOLETH

The Hebrew word neat The word which the Gileadites under Jephthah made use of as a test at the passages of the river Jordan after a victory over the Ephraimites. The word has two meanings in Hebrew: First, an ear of corn; and second, a stream of water. As the Ephraimites were desirous of crossing the river, it is probable that this second meaning suggested it to the Gileadites as an appropriate test word on the occasion. The proper sound of the first letter of this word is sh, a harsh breathing which is exceedingly difficult to be pronounced by persons whose vocal organs have not been accustomed to it. Such was the ease with the Ephraimites, who substituted for the aspiration the hissing sound of s.

Their organs of voice were incapable of the aspiration, and therefore, as the record has it, they "could not frame to pronounce it right " The learned Burder remarks (Oriental Customs ii, page 782) that in Arabia the difference of pronunciation among persons of various districts is much greater than in most other places, and such as easily accounts for the circumstance mentioned in the passage of Judges. Hutchinson (Spirit of Masonry, page 182), speaking of this word, rather fancifully derives it from the Greek Gags, I revere, and a stone, and, therefore, he says Sibbolithon, Colo Lapidem, implies that they—the Freemasons—retain and keep inviolate their obligations, as the Juramentum per Jovem Lapidem, the most obligatory oath held among the heathen." It may be remarked that in the instructions of the Fellow Graft's Degree where the story of the Ephraimites is introduced, and where Shibboleth is symbolically interpreted as meaning plenty, the word waterford is sometimes used incorrectly, instead of waterfall Shibboleth means a Stood of water, a rapid stream, not a ford. In Psalm lxix, 3, the word is used in this exact sense. Shibboleth shetafatni, meaning the Stood has overwhelmed me. And, besides a waterfall is an emblem of plenty, because it indicates an abundance of water; while a waterford, for the converse reason, is, if any symbol at all a symbol of scarcity. This explanation by Doctor Mackey has been criticized, the first comment being that the passage of Scripture cited here contains no allusion whatever to a waterfall. Of course it does refer to "the passages of the Jordan" which were certainly waterfords. At these places the test was made to ascertain whether those who came to cross were Ephraimites. Further comment made is that Doctor Mackey seems to have based his opinion on the assumption that the symbol of plenty referred to an abundance of water, and it is urged as opposing this conclusion that an abundance of water is nowhere else a Masonic suggestion of plenty, while corn is so employed in speech. The further point is made that if the reference were to the quantity of water the reasoning is not conclusive.

A running stream may have as much water at a ford as at a fall. All the running water must pass the ford as well as at the cataract. The water at the ford may be more shallow, but there i8 just as much of it. Indeed it often happens that a fall does not extend entirely across a river, so that the quantity passing over it may not be equal to that at the ford. For this reason it is claimed a waterfall is not a symbol of plenty any more than a waterford. This reasoning is said to be strengthened by consideration of the Hebrew meaning of Shibboleth. One authority gives two meanings, an ear of corn and a stream.

The first is translated oftener. These suggestions have much value for us, and we may add that the references by Doctor Mackey to water, are as with all his comments, very much to the point. Water in some form is essential to life. The fertility of the ground depends upon the use of water. The scarcity of water gives importance to the use of the word as a symbol. The rainfall in Palestine was limited and uncertain, and the rivers few, and of very limited use. A waterfall became a symbol of abundance while a waterford indicated the Scarcity of water in the river, permitting its passage. The two are not the same thing by any means in their allusions.

They do suggest, as Brother Mackey pointed out, the difference between scarcity and abundance. If we consider the reference by Brother Mackey in this light, we see the force of his reasoning very clearly. It is true that the same body of water may at one place widen out and be shallow and then it is crossed at that point by easy passage, while at another place the same amount of water may tumble over a rock and form a waterfall.

If we start out by supposing the same amount of water is falling in each ease, we get the understanding of the critic, but this was not Doctor Mackey's argument. He was thinking of that abundance of water which tumbles plentifully over a precipice, and comparing it with a river which is almost dry and permits easy passage, the one indicating plenty and the other scarcity. Let it not be forgotten that nowadays we look upon the slaughter of the Ephraimites somewhat differently than formerly. We are told that at that time there fell forty and two thousand. This was once generally understood as meaning forty-two thousand, but it is today usually accepted as two thousand and forty only.

The pronunciation of the word Shibboleth is usually with the stress on the first syllable, the I short, and the o obscure as in the word theory. Doctor Young's Analytical Concordance puts the stress on the first syllable and gives the o as obscure in sound, but he also places on record an alternative pronunciation in which the o is marked long. Another authority, Concise Dictionary of Hebrew and Chaldee Terms in the Bible, Hunt and Eaton, 1894, puts the stress on the second syllable with the o long. Here the word is traced to a Hebrew one, pronounced showable, from a root meaning to flow, and therefore shibboleth as meaning a stream that is flowing, an ear of corn groung out, and by analogy a flood; an ear of corn is given as shibboleth, with the o long. But a careful search among English Bibles including the Jewish Encyclopedia unearthed no alternative pronunciations.

However, the Fonolexika Langenscheidt,, Hebrew English Dictionary, a vocabulary of the Hebrew Old Testament based upon the pronunciation of the Sephardirn or Jews of Western Europe, does give on page 339 the word with the stress on the second syllable and the o long, the definition being ear (of corn), point, branch, stream, water-course. For those who may hear the alternative pronunciation and are tempted to mention it, then it is well to understand that both sets of sounds and stresses of syllables have substantial support, one from Jewish authority, the other from English acceptance. In any event, there is nothing to justify between critic and speaker a repetition of the Bible history as told by John Milton:

That sore battle, when so many died

Without reprieve, adjudged to death

For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth.

In commenting upon the use of picturesque phrases the London Times, 1924 asked: How many of those who talk glibly of shibboleths have before them the picture of the wretched Ephraimites at the for d striving frantically to frame the word which is going to be the arbiter for them of life and death? Rev. Walter Crick, of Oving Vicarage, in answer, mentions a striking repetition, not of the word, but of the facts which the word connotes, as related to him by Major General Sir George Mac Munn:

After Lord Allenby's final routing of the Turkish forces broken parties of fugitives arrived at the fords of Jordan. There were many Arabs and Syrians conscriptioned in the Turkish Army. The fords were held by our Arab allies, and when Turkish soldiers tried to pass they one and all said they were Syrians. So the Arab guards said, " Say now, Bozzel" meaning onion, and they said 4' Bossel" for no Turk could pronounce it right.

History is said to repeat itself, adds Mr. Criek, and, if this is so, no more singular illustration of the fact could well be imagined than is presented by this picture of the Turkish soldiers "striving frantically to frame the word which is going to be the arbiter for them of life and death." just as did the Ephraimites, three thousand years ago, and probably at the selfsame ford. The curious instance of the Ephraimites is not the only one related in history. The Builder, 1923 (page 31), records that during the awful days of the Sicilian Vespers a suspect was similarly tried. The name of dried peas among the Sicilians was ciceri: if the man pronounced the c with a chee sound he was allowed to pass as being a Sicilian; but if he gave it an s sound, he was captured as being a Frenchman. During a battle between the Danes and Saxons on Saint Bryee's Day in 1002, if tradition is to be trusted, the words Chichester Church were employed as a like test.

• SHIELD

The shape of the shield worn by the knight in the Middle Ages varied according to the caprice of the wearer, but generally it was large at the top and gradually diminished to a point, being made of wood and covered with leather, and on the outside was seen the escutcheon or representation of the armorial bearings of the owner.

The shield, with all the other parts of the armor worn by the knights except the gauntlets, has been discontinued by the modern Masonic Knights. Doctor Oliver thinks that in some of the military initiations, as in those of the Scandinavian mysteries, the shield was substituted for the apron. An old heraldic writer, quoted by Sloane-Evans (Grammar of British Heraldry, page 153), thus gives the symbolic import of the shield: "Like as the shield served in the battle for a safeguard of the body of soldiers against wounds, even so in time of peace, the same being hanged up, did defend the owner against the malevolent detractions of the envious."

• SHIELD OF DAVID

Two interlaced triangles, more commonly known as the Seal of Solomon, and considered by the ancient Je vs as a talisman of great efficacy (see Seal of Solomon). Because the shield was, in battle a protection, like a talisman, to the person, the Hebrews used the same word, Magen, to signify both a shield and a talisman. Gaffarel says, in his Curiositates Inauditae (London, 1650, page 133), "The Hebrew word Maghen signifies a scutcheon, or any other thing noted with Hebrew characters, the virtue whereof is like to that of a scutcheon." After shoving that the shield was never an image, because the Mosaic law forbade the making of graven images, he adds: "Maghen, therefore, signifies properly any piece of paper or other like matter marked or noted with certain characters drawn from the Tetragrammaton, or Great Name of four letters, or from any other."

The most usual form of the Shield of David was to place in the center of the two triangles, and at the intersecting points, the Hebrew word sass, Agla, which was compounded of the initials of the words of the sentence, Atah Gibor Lolam Adonai, meaning Thou art strong in the eternal God. Thus constructed, the Shield of David was supposed to he a preservative against all sorts of dangers (see Magic Squares).

• SHINTO

The national worship of the Japanese, and the word signifies the path of the gods. I t is ancient and is analogous to nature worship with ancestor worship.

• SHINTOISM

From Shin, meaning god or gods, and to, the way. The ancient religion of Japan, and founded on the worship of ancestors and nature. It acknowledges a Supreme Creator and numerous subordinate gods called Kami, many of whom are the apotheoses of emperors and great men. It believes in the immortality of the soul, and in its ritual uses symbols, such as the mirror—which is the symbol of an unsoiled life—and lustrations symbolic of moral purification.. Like the early Grecian mythology Shintoism has deified natural objects, such as the sun, the air, earth, fire, water, lightning, thunder, etc It is a system much mixed up with the philosophy of Confucius and with myths and legends.

About the sixth century, 522, Buddhism came by way of Korea from China to Japan and thereafter continued side by side with Shintoism for three hundred years when the two were united in the doctrine of Ryobu-Shinto, the Dual Shinto. From the ninth century the two grew together intimately until the middle of the seventeenth century when a determined effort was made to return to the pure Shinto of the Kojiki. The Record of Antiquity, the Kojiki and the Record of Japan, the Nihonyis, both completed in the eighth century, are the sacred books of Shinto and contain picturesque accounts of prehistoric events. Such ethics as are taught by them and their adherents may be briefly expressed as the advice to follow the pure impulses of one's heart. Buddhism for a time suffered temporary eclipse by the later reaction toward primitive Shintoism but was too deeply planted for complete uprooting. Slowly Buddhism regained much of its former prominence.

• SHRINE

Doctor Oliver says that the shrine is the place where the secrets of the Royal Arch are deposited. The word is not so used in the United States of America, nor does it seem properly applicable according to the legend of the Degree. The word is frequently applied to the Ancient Arabic Order, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.

The Shrine, as is for brevity the familiar name applied to the Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, has an origin about which the various writers upon the subject have not agreed.The point on which there is general agreement is that the real work of preparing a Ritual and organizing a Temple in the City of New York and four years later organizing what was first known as the "Imperial Grand Council of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for the United States of America," was done by Dr. Walter M. Fleming, ably assisted by Nobles (Charles T. McClenachan and a few others (see history of the Imperial Council, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, W. B. Melish, Preston Belvin, Jarnes McGee, George S. Meredith, Fred D. Schram, Committee on History, Cincinnati,1919, page 14, also see Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, pages 1973 to 1983). Noble Fleming and his associates purposely gave the Ritual an alluring mysticism presented in Oriental style. So much is this in evidence that even those active in the Shrine from the earlier years found difficulty in saying with precision how much or how little confidence should be placed in any claims made for an exclusively foreign origin of the institution.

We submit some of the statements. From these the reader may determine whether the Shrine was from the far East, or of near New York, or Oriental in dress and American by birth. The history is discussed in Mecca, the Parent Temple, 1894, a book "compiled and collated" by Noble Dr. Walter M. Fleming and Noble William S. Paterson. Brother Fleming was the first Grand Imperial Potentate. Grand in the titles was discarded by the Imperial Council in 1887. The name of the Temple at New York was Gotham and was changed when it was decided that all Temples should have an Arabic or Egyptian title, when Mecca was chosen. Noble Paterson was the first Recorder of Mecca Temple, serving for twenty-five years, and was also Recorder of the Imperial Council, 1876-89. Pages 12 to 14 of the above work state, "'the Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine was instituted by the Mohammedan Kalif Alee (whose name be praised!), the cousin-german and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed (God favor and preserve him!), in the year of the Hegira 25 (A.D. 644) at Mecca, in Arabia, as an Inquisition or Vigilance Committee, to dispense justice and execute punishment upon criminals who escaped their just deserts through the tardiness of the courts, and also to promote religious toleration among cultured men of all nations." Brothers Fleming and Paterson say also: "The Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in America does not advocate Mohammedanism as a sect, but inculcates the same respect to Deity here as in Arabia and elsewhere, and hence the secret of its profound grasp on the intellect and heart of all cultured people. The Ritual now in rise is a translation from the original Arabic, found preserved in the Archives of the Order at Aleppo, Syria, whence it was brought, in 1860, to London, England, by Rizk Allah Hassoon Effendee, who was the author of several important works in Arabic, one of which was a metrical version of the Book of Job. His History of Islam offended the Turkish Government because of its humanitarian principles, and he was forced to leave his native country. He was a ripe scholar in Arabic poetry and the general literature of the age, and his improvements in the direction of certain parts of the Ritual of the Shrine are of great beauty and value." They add that in 1698 a "learned Orientalist, Luigi Marracci," was initiated into "our Order of Nobles," and translated the Ritual into Italian, and "in making the present version the translator has had the benefit of the work of Alnasafi, of Marracci, and of Hassoon.

The rendering is literal where the idiom permitted, except where a local reference required the substitution of America for Oriental names of cities. The work was perfected in August, 1870, under the supervision of Dr. Walter M. Fleming, Thirty-third Degree, Sovereign Grand Inspector General, Ancient Accepted Scottish Mite, and Past Commander of Columbian Commandery, No. 1, Knights Templar, New York, who received his instructions and authority from Rizk Allah Hassoon Effendee, who had competent jurisdiction for America." The History of 1894 by Brothers Fleming and Paterson deals with William J. Florence, the famous actor. A long letter from Brother Florence written in 1882 tells of a visit by him in August, 1870, at Marseilles, France, to a Hall near the Grand Hotel de l'Univers where there was a meeting of Bokhara Shrine Temple presided over by Yusef Churi Bey, of the Persian Consulate. Brother Florence says:

"I need not describe the work of the Temple any further than to say that the intention is to enact a drama very much like our own, which had for its object the same lesson, and there can be no better or more zealous workers in a good cause than those French brothers who celebrated the Mysteries at Marseilles on that evening. My duties prevented a sufficiently long stay in Marseilles to witness a second performance and I therefore begged Yusef Bey to allow me to have a copy of the Ritual and Laws which I received on the day I sailed for Algiers.

In Algiers the Shrine of the Mogribins was in full operation, meeting each week on Friday evening. zebu Mohammed Baki was the Shayk, and among the members were nearly every one of the many consuls, vice-consuls, and other diplomats of the port, many of the most noted merchants and bankers, and not a few of the learned and gifted Mohammedans, who are passionately fond of perpetuating ancient customs which increase their social pleasures.

The costumes and furniture of the Shrine in Algiers were gorgeous in silk, wool and fine linen, decorated with embroidery in gold, silver and colors, and the sword, spears, and other articles used by the guards and officers in the work were genuine steel, many of which had been in actual service in the field of battle." A few months before Brother Florence died, (Grand Secretary Parvin of Iowa submitted to him a newspaper clipping that said among other things that he was initiated at Cairo. In reply the famous actor wrote: "The points in the paper are mainly correct. I was the first to introduce the Order in America. Doctor Fleming amplified and perfected the work."

A letter written by Doctor Fleming is in the History by Noble Paterson and himself. He says: "Mr. Florence was entertained as a Mason at Marseilles, in Bokhara Temple of the Arabic Bektash. He at this time simply witnessed the opening session of the exoteric ceremonials which characterize the politic or religious Order of Bektash of Oriental Europe. A monitorial, history and explanatory manuscript he also received there. It did not embrace the esoteric inner temple exemplification or obligation, nor the Unwritten Law which is never imparted to any one except from mouth to ear. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Florence was similarly favored in Algiers and Aleppo.

Through letters and commendations he finally secured the manuscript monitor, history and descriptive matters, from which sprang the Order in this country. It was in Algiers and Aleppo that he was received into the Inner Temple under the domain of the Crescent, and first became possessor of the esoteric ivory the unwritten law, and the Shayk's obligation. Subsequently he visited Cairo, Egypt, and was admitted, and collected more of Oriental history and the manuscript of Memorial Ceremonials.

But Mr. Florence was never fully recognized or possessed of authority until long after his return to America. All he possessed was a disconnected series of sheets in Arabic and French, with some marginal memoranda made by himself from verbal elucidation in Aleppo Through Professor Albert L. Rawson, these, with others received afterwards through correspondence abroad, comprised the translations from which the Order started here. Mr. Florence and myself received authority to introduce the Order in America."

Brother James McGee in his Early History of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrive e in North America tells a different story. Published in 1918 this pamphlet says that with the object of bringing the Order to the notice of the Masonic Fraternity the founder felt the same necessity, as did those who have founded other secret fraternal orders, of giving it the flavor of mysticism and antiquity to secure a standing and success. Brother Fleming wanted the Order to be Arabic by birth but American by adoption, having a broad toleration, "He who holds a belief in a Supreme or Most High is never questioned as to any definition of that belief." In this connection examine the dialogue between the Angel and the Student on page 208 of Francis S. Salturs' book Honey and Gall, published by J. E. Lippincott & Company, at Philadelphia, 1875, a copy of which was owned by Doctor Fleming and preserved by his family. This work has some significant marginal notes written by Doctor Fleming showing that his manuscript of the ceremonies was influenced by this poem. The lines in question are:

ANGEL Believest thou? . .

STUDENT In what?

ANGEL In powers supreme that fix and shape thy lot That either wound or kill, sustain, create, That rule thy doings, and command thy fate?

STUDENT Spirit! A sacrilege thou mayst suspect. But hark thee! All religions I respect As good and worthy,—but believe in none. The bronze-skinned savage who adores the sun And bows before the flament eye in fear Should not be scoffed at, if his voice sincere In simple wordings swelleth out in prayer To one that warms and feeds him by its glare. The Parsees kneeling to their God of Fire Ascend with cheerful steps a blazing pyre To perish faithful—girt with strong belief. Do they not merit for their martyred grief An envied life of joys in other spheres As consolation for their worldly fearst Cannot a noble heart in Greek or Turk In breast of Jew as well as Christian lurk? The struts and splendors of the Orient's rites, The pageants, jewelled costumes, countless lights, The wailing dervishes with sandalled feet, The censors swinging with their perfumes sweet. The sumptuous mosques, marvels of Eastern art, The tekke's domed, chiselled in every part With crafty hand, till stone resembles lace A glorious tribute. age cannot efface— lithe sensuous music, velvet to the ear Monotonous of rhythm, deep, sad, austere, Yet soul vibrating, mystic, gravely sung By throat melodious. and by fervent tongue: The stately Imans robed in white and blue, The zains, defenders, eunuchs, retinue, Steel, gold and glory pomp immense. Does not this speak to eye, to soul, to sense, Persuading all as loud the muessin drones, Allah is great, Mahonlet's love atones." Doctor Fleming has a note substituting the word Arab for Jew in the above text, and two additional lines were added by him in his copy of Saltus' books These are: Stir thy lethargy— Go forth, expiate thy sins.

Brother Fleming had traveled throughout Europe, the Orient, and America. Democratic congenial, a sportsman, ever at home with kindred spirits, a constant student, he had a book in hand up to his last moments Possessing a keen retentive memory, he was the best of entertainers, having a fund of recitations and he attracted a host of friends. Through miscellaneous literary work he developed into form his conception of the Order of the Mystic Shrine as a relaxation from the serious labor necessary in the portrayal by himself and his fellow members of the many characters in the Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

The foundation of the Shrine was laid in that Rite. On Sunday, April 21, 1867, Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection of Brooklyn held a special meeting at the Metropolitan Hotel, New York Cites for the purpose of communicating the Ineffable Grades of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite upon Brother William J. Florence who was "about to depart for Europe," as the Minutes say. There were present Illustrious Brother McClenachan and one other member of the Supreme Council for the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, two from the Southern, and a number of Brethren of Aurora Grata. The Degrees of the Council, Chapter, and Consistory were also conferred upon Brother Florence before his departure. This was the trip made by him to the Old World preceding the establishment of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in the United States.

Brother Charles A. Brockaway, Past Potentate of Kismet Temple, and Historian of the Aurora Grata Bodies says: "Brother Florence brought back monitorial, historical and explanatory manuscripts and communicated the secrets of the Order to Dr. Walter M. Fleming of Aurora Grata Consistory, who was empowered to introduce and establish the Order in America. It was determined to confer the Order only on Freemasons and on the 16th of June, 1871 (brother McGee puts the date in September of the following year), four Knights Templar and seven members of Aurora Grata Consistory, Thirty-second Degree, were made acquainted with the secrets of the Order by Doctor Fleming and Brother Florence. It was decided to engage in the establishment of the Order, and on the 26th of September, 1872, the organization was effected and officers elected. Nine of the thirteen founders of the Mystic Shrine in the United States were members of the Aurora Crata Bodies~2 (see One Hundred Years of Aurora Grata, Charles A. Brockaway, Brooklyn, 1908, page 48).

William J. Florence, Walter M. Fleming, Charles T. MeClenachan, Daniel Sickels, John W. Simons, (George W. Millar, William S. Paterson, John A. Moore and James S. Chappelle were the nine members mentioned above. The first thirty Nobles of the Mystic Shrine were officially listed and numbered as follows:

1, Walter Millard Fleming 2, William Jermyn Florence 3, Sherwood C. Campbell 4, James ,S. Chappelle 5, Oswald M. d'Aubigne 6, Edward Eddy 7, Charles T. McClenachan 8, George W. Millar 9, John A. Moore 10, Albert P. Moriarty 11, William S. Paterson 12, Daniel Sickels 13, John W. Simons 14, Benson Sherwood 15, Charles Aikman 16, William V. Alexander 17, John E. Bendix 18, William Blanchard 19, Benjamin F. Brady 20, John F. Collins 21, Edward du Laurans 22, Edward Martin Luther Ehlers 23, Peter Forrester 24, William Fowler 25, William T. Hardenbrook 26, Philip Lenhart 27, Joseph M. Levey 28, James McGee 29, Charles T. Murrat 30, William D. May

Brother Fleming was working early in the seventies upon the Ritual. He joined the Consistory in May, 1871, and in March, 1872, became a member of Columbian Commandery. He conferred with an able ritualist and Masonic student, Charles T. McClenachan, and Brother McGee says they agreed to decorate the Shrine Ritual with the glamour of Eastern mysticism and color. The new organization became an adjunct to the York as well as the Scottish Rite. A candidate must be a Thirty-second Degree Freemason or a Knights Templar.

Doctor Fleming was the physician and friend of Brother Florence. Fleming and McClenachan, according to Noble James McGee, considered how the Order could gain the quickest success. Florence consented to the use of his name. Fleming drew upon his imagination and wrote up Florence in his visits to the imaginary Shrine Temples of foreign lands in "regal splendor," as he termed it, and his "comminglings" with the Nobility of the Order abroad, bestowing upon his congenial patient and chum many honors (see Early History of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in North America, James McGee, New York, 1918, page 9).

While less romantic, this the more recent account of the Order has gained ground though the story lacks the picturesque qualities of the days when on paper at least relations with Shrine Temples of the East were presumably maintained and the advertising of a welcome to visiting Nobles was printed regularly in Arabic in the columns of a New York publication.

Mecca Temple was organized in 1872. The following officers were elected, there being thirteen members of the Temple, of whom eleven were present. Florence and Campbell were absent: Walter M. Fleming, Potentate; Charles T. McClenaehan, Chief Rabban; John A. Moore, Assistant Rabban; William S. Paterson, Recorder; Edward Eddy, High Priest; James S. Chappelle, Treasurer; George W. Millar, Oriental Guide; and Oswald M. d'Aubigne, Captain of the Guard. In the Imperial Grand Council of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for the United States of America was organized on June 6, 1876. The following were officers of the Imperial Grand— Grand as a title was dropped later—Council for three years: Walter M. Fleming, New York, Grand Potentate; George F. Loder, Rochester, New York, Deputy Grand Potentate; Philip F. Lenhart, Brooklyn, Grand Chief Rabban; Edward M. L. Ehlers, New York City, Grand Assistant Chief Rabban; William H. Whiting, Roehester, New York, High Priest and Prophet; Samuel R. Carter, Rochester, New York, Oriental Guide; Aaron L. Northrup, New York City, Grand Treasurer; William S. Paterson, New York City, Grand Recorder; Albert P. Moriarty, New York City, Grand Financial Secretary; John L. Stettinius, Cincinnati, Ohio, Grand First Ceremonial Master; Benson Sherwood, New York City, Grand Second Ceremonial Master; Samuel Harper, Pittsburgh, Grand Marshal; Franl; Bascom, Montpelier, Vermont, Grand Captain of the Guards; and George Scott, Paterson, New Jersey, Grand Outer Guard.

Brother Fleming was born at Portland, Maine, June 13, 1838, and died at Mount Vernon, New York, on September 9, 1913; McClenachan was born at Washington, District of Columbia, on April 13, 1829, and died on December 19, 1896; Florence was born at Albany, New York, on July 26, 1831, and died at Philadelphia on November 19, 1891; Paterson was a Scotehman, born at Haddington on March 6, 1844, coming to the United States at three years of age, and died in New York City on May 21, 1913. Brief Masonic biographies are given in the Early History by Noble McGee of Nobles Fleming, Florence, McClenachan, Paterson, and Sam Briggs, the latter succeeding Noble Fleming as Imperial Potentate at the Cleveland session of 1886. Noble Briggs as the first Potentate of Al Koran Temple of Cleveland, Ohio, is credited highly by Brother McGee for the fine staging of the ceremonies in the early days. DamasCU3 Temple of Rochester is credited by him on page 17 of his History with the first complete rendition of the ceremonial work, but the History of the Imperial Council (page 167), assigns this honor to Al Koran Temple.

Important articles of Shrine interest were published in the Builder, 1916 (pages 157, 242, 286, and 350), the last giving a list of the Masonic connections of Noble Florence whose affiliation with Freemasonry had been mistakenly questioned.

William Winter, the historian of the American stage, has a chapter of eulogy upon Florence in his Wallet of Time. He is bountiful of praise in verse and prose, stating of Florence that he was "in art admirable; in life gentle; he was widely known, and he was known only to be loved." Again, he claims of Florence that "Heaven were lonely but for souls like this." We must not too readily exclude from the credit of truly active work for the Shrine this gracious personality, "Billy" Florence. At the suggestion of Brother W. Freeland Kendrick, a resolution was offered at the meeting of the Imperial Council at Indianapolis in 1919 by Brother Philip D. Gordon, proposing the establishment of a home for friendless, orphaned, and crippled children, to be supported by the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine of North America. The matter was laid over until the meeting of 1920 at Portland, Oregon, when Brother Kendrick personally presented the matter in his annual address as Imperial Potentate. At this time a resolution was adopted authorizing the establishment of a hospital to be supported on an annual per capita basis and to be known as the Shrine Hospital for Crippled Children. An assessment of $2.00 per capita was levied upon the entire membership and a Committee of Seven was to be appointed to select a site and secure plans and specifications. Provision was also made for additional assessments to be levied annually for the support of the Institution.

After the Portland session Imperial Potentate Ellis L. Garretson appointed the following Committee and called its first meeting at St. Louis on October 30, 1920: Sam P. Cochran, Hella Temple; Philip D Gordon, Karnak Temple, Frederic W. Reator, Afifi Temple; W. Freeland Kendrick, Lu Lu Temple; Oscar M. Lanstrum, Algeria Temple; John D. McGilvray, Islam Temple; John A. Morrison, Kismet Temple. At the St. Louis meeting Noble Cochran was appointed chairman and Noble Morrison elected secretary. A resolution was adopted providing for the incorporation of the hospital work under the title "The Shriners' Charity Foundation." The word "charity" was afterward eliminated and the official title became "Shriners' Hospitals for Crippled Children."

Up to this time but one large hospital centrally located was contemplated, but at the next session in Des Moines, 1921, the report of the Committee was convincing that no one hospital would meet the needs. the Imperial Council adopted a resolution providing for the election of a Board of Trustees to be incorporated and vested with authority to select and purchase sites in various parts of the Jurisdiction of the Imperial Council.

A unanimous vote was cast for the following Trustees: Nobles Sam P. Cochran, W. Freeland Kendrick, Philip D. Gordon, Frederic W. Keator, Oscar M. Lanstrum, John D. McGilvray and Forrest Adair. Organization was perfected at once by the election of Noble Cochran, chairman; W. Freeland Kendrick, vice chairman; and Forrest Adair, secretary. Two changes in the Board resulted from deaths. Noble Gordon was succeeded by Noble Arthur W. Chapman of Khartum Temple, appointed by Imperial Potentate McCandless in 1923, and Noble Keator was succeeded by Noble James R. Watt, of Cyprus Temple, appointed by Imperial Potentate Dykeman, in 1924. At the 1924 session in Kansas City the Imperial Council added its first four officers as ex-officio members.

They were James E. Chandler, Imperial Potentate; James C. Burger, Deputy Imperial Potentate; David W. Crosland, Imperial Chief Rabban, and Clarence M. Dunbar, Imperial Assistant Rabban. Trustees whose terms had expired were re-elected. The next meeting of the Board of Trustees was held in Atlanta, in September, 1921, all members attending. It was here that the board received the advice and co-operation of three distinguished orthopedic surgeons: Robert B. Osgood, of Boston; A. McKenzie Forbes, of Montreal, and Michael Hoke, of Atlanta. From their willingness to assist in the work and give the board the benefit of their skill and experience there grew the Advisory Board of Orthopedic Surgeons, who devote a great deal of time, without remuneration, to the Shrine institutions.

In the spring of 1925, with the opening late in February of the hospitals at Montreal, Canada, and Springfield, Massachusetts, there were seven regular hospitals in the series, besides four mobile units, the total capacity being five hundred beds, which meant that two thousand bed-patients a year can be given surgical treatment and hospital care. The Philadelphia Hospital was then well under way, the contracts having been let the previous Fall, and the bids for the Chicago Hospital were opened by the Board of Trustees in March. The first child admitted for surgical treatment by a Shriners' surgeon was a patient at Shreveport, Louisiana, in September, 1922. The hospital building was not then completed but an old structure on the property was used temporarily The new fifty-bed institution was dedicated in April, 1923. Twin Cities Hospital, in the corporate limits of Minneapolis lout on the St. Paul side of the river, opened in March, 1923, with a capacity of sixty beds. San Francisco Hospital opened in June, 1923, with a capacity of fifty beds. Portland, Oregon, Hospital opened in January, 1924, with a capacity of fifty beds. St. Louis Hospital opened in April, 1924, and dedicated on June 1 with a capacity of one hundred beds.

Springfield and Montreal Hospitals, of fifty beds each, opened in February, 1925. Sites were Selected in 1924 for the hospitals in Philadelphia and Chicago and were donated by Lu Lu and Medinah Temples. The Shriners' hospitals and mobile units are open to every crippled child, without restriction as to race or religion, subject to the following requirements: The parents or guardians must be financially unable to pay for its treatment. The child must not be over fourteen years of age, of normal mentality, and there must be reasonable hope of materially improving the child's condition through orthopedic surgery.

• SHOCK

A striking of hands and feet, so as to produce a sudden noise. There is a ceremony called the shock, which was in use in the reception of an Apprentice in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and is still used by some Lodges in what is called the Shock of Entrance, and by all in the Shock of Enlightenment. Of the first shock as well as of the second, there are evident traces in some of the earlier rituals of the eighteenth century, and there is no doubt that it was an ancient ceremony, the gradual disuse of which is an innovation (see Shock of Entrance and Shock of Enlightenment).

• SHOCK OF ENLIGHTENMENT

A ceremony used in all the Degrees of Symbolic Freemasonry. By it we seek to symbolize the idea of the birth of material light, by the representation of the circumstances that accompanied it, and their references to the birth of intellectual or Masonic light. The one is the type of the other; and therefore the illumination of the candidate is given with a ceremony that may be supposed to imitate the primal illumination of the universe — most feebly, it is true, and yet not altogether without impressiveness. The Shock of Enlightenment is, then, a symbol of the change which is now taking place in the intellectual condition of the candidate. It is the symbol of the birth of intellectual light and the dispersion of intellectual darkness.

• SHOCK OF ENTRANCE

A ceremony formerly used on the admission of an Entered Apprentice, but becoming obsolete. In the old initiations, the same word signified to die and to be initiated, because, in the initiation, the lesson of death and the resurrection to eternal life was the dogma inculcated. In the initiation of an Apprentice in Freemasonry the same lesson begins to be taught, and the initiate, entering upon a new life and new duties, disrupting old ties and forming new ones, passes into a new birth. This is, or ought to be, necessarily accompanied by some ceremony which should symbolically represent this great moral change. Hence the impression of this idea is made bit the symbolism of the shock at the entrance of the candidate.

The shock of entrance is then the symbol of the disruption of the candidate from the ties of the world, and his introduction into the life of Freemasonry. it is the symbol of the agonies of the First death and of the throes of the new birth.

• SHOE

Among the ancient Israelites, the shoe was made use of in several significant ways. To put off the shoes, imported reverence, and was done in the presence of God, or on entering the dwelling of a Superior To unloose one's shoe and give it to another was the way of confirming a contract.

Thus we read in the Book of Ruth, that Boaz having proposed to the nearest kinsman of Ruth to exercise his legal right by redeeming the land of Naomi, which was offered for sale, and marrying her daughter-in-law, the kinsman, being unable to do so, resigned his right of purchase to Boaz; and the narrative goes on to say (Ruth iv, 7 and S), "Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbor: and this was a testimony in Israel. Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew off his shoe." The reference to the shoe in the First Degree is therefore really as a symbol of a Covenant to be entered into. In the Third Degree the symbolism is altogether different. For an explanation of it, see Discalceation.

• SHOULKAIN

A Hebrew compound word, meaning close-guarded captive. Stolkin, mentioned in the Ninth and other Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SHOVEL

An instrument used to remove rubbish. It is one of the avorking-tools of a Royal Arch Mason, and symbolically teaches him to remove the rubbish of passions and prejudices, that he may be fitted, when he thus escapes from the captivity of sin, for the search and the reception of Eternal Truth and Wisdom.

• SHRINER OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

See Flag Ceremony

• SHRYOCK, THOMAS J.

When Thomas J. Shryock died on February 3, 1918, he was in the midst of his thirty-second year as Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Maryland—almost twice the length of office held by any predecessor in his own or in any other Grand Lodge. Such a record is now impossible among modern American Grand Jurisdictions which elect a new Grand Master each year (New York reelects for one year, Massachusetts for two) but one that could have surprised no Mason in Great Britain where it has long been a tradition among the three Grand Lodges to reselect the same Grand Master for many years on end.

General Shryock, the great-grandson of a Revolutionary Lieutenant-Colonel, was born in Baltimore, February 27, 1851. He held almost every office of high rank in Masonry; was a railway president, a businessman, bank director, was director or treasurer of hospitals, was once police commissioner of Baltimore; and from having been Brigadier General on the staff of Governor Henry Lloyd came into the title of "the General" by which he was everywhere known. Among his countless Honorary Lodge memberships was one in Solomon Lodge, 346t, of England, of which the Worshipful Master was Robert Freke Gould, and which had among its subscribing and Honorary Members Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., William Howard Taft Duke of Connaught, Count Goblet d'Alviella, and the Kings of Denmark and Sweden.

• SIDE DEGREES

There are certain Masonic Degrees, which, not being placed in the regular routine of the acknowledged Degrees, are not recognized as a part of Ancient Freemasonry, but receive the name of Honorary or Side Degrees. They constitute no part of the regular ritual, and are not taken under the specific control of either Grand Lodges, Grand Chapters, or any other of the legal, Administrative Bodies b of the Institution. Although a few of them are very old, the greater number are of a comparatively modern origin, and are generally supposed to have been indebted for their invention to the ingenuity of either Grand Lecturers, or other distinguished Freemasons.

Their history and ceremonies are often interesting, and so far as we have been made acquainted with them, their tendency, when they are properly conferred, is always moral. They are not given in Lodges or Chapters, but at private meetings of the Brethren or companions possessing them, informally and temporarily called for the sole purpose of conferring them. These temporary assemblies owe no allegiance to any supreme controlling Body, except so far as they are composed of Master or Royal Arch Masons, and when the business of conferring the Degrees is accomplished, they are dissolved at once, not to meet again, except under similar circumstances and for a similar purpose.

Some of them are conferred on Master Masons, some on Royal Arch Masons, and some only on Knights Templar. There is another class which females connected by certain ties of relationship with the Fraternity, are permitted to receive; and this fact, in some measure, assimilates these Degrees to the Freemasonry of Adoption, or Female Freemasonry, which is practiced in France and some other European countries, although there are important points of difference between them . These female Side Degrees have received the name of Androgyrwous Degrees, from two Greek words signifying man and woman, and are thus called to indicate the participation in them by both sexes.

The principal Side Degrees that have been practiced in the United States of America are as follows:

1. Secret Monitor

2. Knight of the Three Kings

3. Knight of Constantinople

4. Mason's Wife and Daughter

5. Ark and Dove

6. Mediterranean Pass

7. Knight and Heroine of Jericho

8. Good Samaritan

9. Knight of the Mediterranean Pass

• SIERRA LEONE

The Grand Lodges of England and Scotland each have three Lodges in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa.

• SIGHT, MAKING MASONS AT

The prerogative of the Grand Master to make Freemasons at sight is described as the eighth landmark of the Order. It is a technical term, which may be defined to be the power to initiate, pass, and raise candidates, by the Grand Master, in a Lodge of Emergency, or, as it is called in the Book of Constitutions, an Occasional Lodge, specially convened by him, and consisting of such Master Masons as he may call together for that purpose only; the Lodge ceasing to exist as soon as the initiation, passing, or raising has been accomplished, and the Brethren have been dismissed by the Grand Master.

The following item appeared in the Leeds Mercury, April 7 to 14, 1730, and bore the heading, London.

A few days since, their Graces the Dukes of Richmond and Montague, accompanied by several Gentlemen, who were all Free and Accepted Masons, according to Ancient Custom, formed a Lodge upon the Top of a Hill near the Duke of Richmond's Seat, at Goodwood in Sussex, and made the Right Hon. the Lord Baltimore a Free and Accepted Mason. It is but right to say that this doctrine is not universally received as established law by the Craft. Brother Mackey did not think, however, that it was ever disputed until within a comparatively recent period.

It is true that Brother Cole (Freemasons Library, book 51), as far back as 1817, remarked in reference to the custom in the United States that it was "a great stretch of power, not recognized, or at least, he believed, not practiced in this country." But the qualifying phrases in this sentence, clearly show that he was by no means certain that he was correct in denying the recognition of the right. Brother Cole, however, would hardly be considered as competent authority on a question of Masonic law, as he was evidently unacquainted with the Book of Constitutions, and does not quote or refer to it throughout his voluminous work.

In that Rook of Constitutions, however, several instance are furnished of the exercise of this right by various Grand Masters.

In 1731, Lord Lovell being Grand Master, he "formed an Occasional Lodge at Houghton Hall, Sir Robert Walpole's House in Norfoll," and there made the Duke of Lorraine, afterward Emperor of Germany, and the Duke of Newcastle, Master Masons. We do not quote the case of the initiation, passing and raising of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1737, which was done in "an Occasional Lodge," over which Doctor Desaguliers presided, because, as Desaguliers was not the Grand Master, nor even, as has been incorrectly stated by the New York Committee of Correspondence, Deputy Grand Master, but only a Past Grand Master, it cannot be called a making at sight. He most probably acted under the Dispensation of the Grand Master, who at that time was the Earl of Darnley. But in 1766, Lord Blaney, who was then Grand Master, convened "an Occasional Lodge," and initiated, passed, and raised the Duke of Gloucester.

Again in 1767, John Salter, the Deputy, then acting as Grand Master, convened "an Occasional Lodge," and conferred the three Degrees on the Duke of Cumberland. In 1787, the Prince of Wales was made a Freemason "at an Occasional Lodge convened," says Brother Preston, "for the purpose at the Star and Garter, Pall Mall, over which the Duke of Cumberland— Grand Master—presided in person." It has been said, however, by those who deny the existence of this prerogative, that these Occasional Lodges were only Special Communications of the Grand Lodge, and the "makings" are thus supposed to have taken place under the authority of that body, and not of the Grand Master. The facts, however, do not sustain this position. Throughout the Book of Constitutions, other meetings, whether regular or special, are distinctly recorded as meetings of the Grand Lodge; while these Occasional Lodges appear only to have been convened by the Grand Master for the purpose of making Freemasons.

Besides, in many instances the Lodge was held at a different place from that of the Grand Lodge, and the officers were not, with the exception of the Grand Master, the officers of the Grand Lodge. Thus the Occasional Lodge which initiated the Duke of Lorraine was held at the residence of Sir Robert Walpole, in Norfolk, while the Grand Lodge always met in London. In 1766, the Grand Lodge held its communications at the Crown and Anchor, but the Occasional Lodge, which in the same year conferred the Degrees on the Duke of Gloucester, was convened at the Horn Tavern. In the following year, the Lodge which initiated the Duke of Cumberland was convened at the Thatched House Tavern, the Grand Lodge continuing to meet at the Crown and Anchor.

But Doctor Mackey also held that a conclusive argument d fortiori, a stronger reason, may be drawn from the dispensing power of the Grand Master which has never been denied. No one ever has doubted, or can doubt, the inherent right of the Grand Master to constitute Lodges by Dispensation, and in these Lodges, so constituted, Freemasons may he legally entered, passed, and raised. This is done every day. Seven Master Masons applying to the Grand Master, he grants them a Dispensation, under authority of which they proceed to open and hold a Lodge and to make Freemasons. This Lodge is, however admitted to be the mere creature of the Grand Master, for it is in his power at any time to revoke the Dispensation he had granted, and thus to dissolve the Lodge. But if the Grand Master has the power thus to enable others to confer the Degrees and make Freemasons, by his individual authority out of his presence, are we not permitted to argue à fortiori, all the more, that he has also the right of congregating seven brethren and causing a Freemason to be made in his sight?

Can he delegate a power to others which he does not himself possess? And is his calling together an Occasional Hodges and making, with the assistance of the Brethren thus assembled, a Freemason "at sight," that is to say, in his presence, any thing more or less than the exercise of his dispensing power for the establishment of a Lodge under Dispensation for a temporary period and for a special purpose. The purpose having been effected, and the Freemason having been made, he revokes his Dispensation, and the Lodge is dismissed. If we assumed any other ground than this, we should be compelled to say that though the Grand Master might authorize others to make Freemasons when he was absent, he could not do it himself when present.

The form of the expression "making Masons at sight" is borrowed from Laurence Dermott, the Grand Secretary of the Atholl Grand Lodge; "making Masons in an Occasional Lodge" is the phrase used by Anderson and his subsequent editors. Brother Dermott (Ahimen Rezon), commenting on the thirteenth of the old regulations, which prescribes that Fellow Crafts and Master Masons cannot be made in a private Lodge except by the Dispensation of the Grand Master, says: "This is a very ancient regulation, but seldom put in practice, new Masons being generally made at private Lodges; however, the Right Worshipful Grand Master has full power and authority to make, or cause to be made, in his worship's presence Free and Accepted Masons at sight, and such making is good. But they cannot be made out of his worship's presence without a written Dispensation for that purpose. Nor can his worship oblige any warranted Lodge to receive the person so made, if the members should declare against him or them; but it such case the Right Worshipful Grand Master may grant them a Warrant and form them into a new Lodge."

But the fact that Brother Dermott uses the phrase does not militate against the existence of the prerogative, nor weaken the argument in its favor. For, in the first place, he is not quoted as authority; and secondly, it is very possible that he did not invent the expression, but found it already existing as a technical phrase generally used by the Craft, although not to be found in the Book of Constitutions. The form there used is "making Masons in an Occasional Lodge," which, as we have already said, is of the same signification. The mode of exercising the prerogative is this: The Grand Master summons to his assistance not less than six other Freemasons, convenes a Lodge, and without any previous probation, but on sight of the candidates confers the Degrees upon him, after which he dissolves the Lodge and dismisses the Brethren. This custom of making Freemasons at sight has been practiced by many Grand Lodges in the United States of America, but is becoming less usual, and some Grand Lodges have prohibited it by a constitutional enactment. A few noted eases may be mentioned: John Wanamaker, at Philadelphia; former Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks, at Indianapolis, Indiana; Rear-Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, at Washington, District of Columbia; and when William Howard Taft was President-Elect, he was made a Freemason "at-sight" on February, 1909, at Cincinnati, by the Grand Master of Ohio.

A valuable historical account of Making Masons at Sight was contributed to the New Age, March, 1925, by Brother William L. Boyden, Librarian at Washington of the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SIGN

Signs constitute that universal language of which the commentator on the Leland Manuscript was that "it is a thing rather to be wished than hoped for." It is evident, however, that such a substitute for a universal language has always existed among mankind. There are certain expressions of ideas which, by an implied common consent, are familiar even to the most barbarous tribes. An extension forward of the open hands will be understood at once by an Australian savage or an American Indian as a gesture betokening peace, while the idea of war or dislike would be as readily conveyed to either of them by a repulsive gesture of the same hands. These are not however, what constitute the signs of Freemasonry. It is evident that every secret society must have some conventional mode of distinguishing strangers from those who are its members, and Freemasonry, in this respects must have followed the universal custom of adopting such modes of recognition.

The Abbé Grandidier (Essais Historiques et Topographiques, page 422) says that when Josse Dotzinger, as architect of the Cathedral of Strassburg, formed, in 1452, all the Master Masons in Germany into one body, "he gave them a word and a particular sign by which they might recognize those who were of their Confraternity." Martene, who wrote a treatise on the ancient rites of the monks (De Antiquis Monachorum ritibus), says that, at the Monastery of Hirsehau, where many Masons were incorporated as Lay Brethren, one of the officers of the monastery was called the Master of the Works; and the Masons under him had a sign which he describes as pugnam super pugnam pone uicissim quasi simules constructores marum; that is, they placed alternately fist upon fist, as ef imitating the builders of ways. He also says, and other writers confirm the statement, that in the Middle Ages the monks had a system of signs by which they were enabled to recognize the members of their different Orders. Krause ( Kunsturkunden iv, page 420) thinks that the Freemasons derived their custom of having signs of recognition from this rule of the old monks. But we can trace the existence of signs to remote antiquity. In the Ancient Mysteries, the initiates were always instructed in a sign. Thus, when a wreath was presented to an initiate of the Mysteries of Mithras by another, instead of receiving it, he east it upon the ground, and this gesture of casting down was accepted as a sign of recognition.

So, too, Apuleius (Metamorphoses) describes the action of one of the devotees of the Mysteries of Isis, and says: "He walked gently, with a hesitating step, the ankle of the left foot being slightly bent, in order, no doubt, that he might afford me some sign by which I might recognize him. " And in another work (Apologia) he says:

"If any one happens to be present who has been initiated into the same rites as myself, if he will give me the sign, he shall then be at liberty to hear what it is that I keep with so much care."

Plautus, too, alludes to this custom in one of his plays (Miles Gloriosuos iv, 2) when he says:

Cedo Signum si horune Bacohorum est.

Give me the sign, if you are one of these Bacchantes.

Signs, in fact, belong to all secret associations, and are no more peculiar to Freemasonry than is a system of initiation. The forms differ, but the principle has always existed.

• SIGNS, UNIVERSALITY OF

Churchward, Yarker, Ward, Cockburn, and a number of other Masonic writers of their way of thinking, have made much of the fact, or at least have tried to, that "Masonic Signs" have been encountered among Congo tribes, Eskimos, Melanesians, the Hairy Ainus, etc., and that on many occasions such tribesmen have responded to Masonic signs.

The difficulty with their "fact" is that there is too much of it. Some 175 separate, distinct, identifiable, nameable motions can be made by the hands, arms, legs, torso, head, eyes, the whole body, etc.; each and every one of those motions has been employed as a "sign" by at least one people, and usually bysmany, not once but thousands of times.

It would be a strange anomaly if explorers, traders, soldiers, missionaries, and other travelers among the so-called "primitive" people did not encounter "Masonic signs"; as for that, the "Masonic signs" were not originated or invented by Masons, who were never able to alter anatomy, but were chosen by them from among the 175 possible motions, gestures, etc., suitable for use as "signs." For at least nine centuries our own Navajo people have had an outdoor ceremony strikingly like our Third Degree; but if one of them who has been made a Mason is asked if they are the same he will smile and say, "They have nothing in common."

So with a Pueblo ceremony similar to HA. (the writer has not only seen and studied these ceremonies on the spot, but has taken part in a few portions of them). Two young traders of New Mexico (both Masons) rode horseback to San Diego and return without once using a highway, and visited some twenty Indian peoples en route with whom they conversed easily by the still-living, still used old Indian sign language. A sign in use somewhere, even if identical with one of our own, proves nothing about Freemasonry—Freemasonry never had the slightest connection with "the ancient gods" (which, incidentally, almost never were "gods"; American Indians have never had any "gods"). Consult Sign Talk, by Ernest Thompson Seton; Doubleday, Page & Co.; Garden City, L. I.; 1918; 1725 signs are explained. Frazer's Golden Bough is an encyclopedia of the subject.

• SIGNATURE

Every Freemason who receives a Certificate or Diploma from a Grand Lodge is required to affix his signature in the margin, for a reason which is given under the words We Varietur, which see.

• SIGNET

A ring on which there is an impression of a device is called a signet. They were far more common among the ancients than they are among the moderns, although they are still used by many persons. Formerly, as is the custom at this day in the East, letters were never signed by the persons who sent them; and their authenticity depended solely on the impression of the signets which were attached to them.

So common was their use among the ancients, that Clement of Alexandria, while forbidding the Christians of the second century to deck their fingers with rings, which would have been a mark of vanity, makes an exception in favor of signet rings. "We must wear," he says, "but one ring, for the use of a signet; all other rings we must east aside." Signets were originally engraved altogether upon stone; and Pliny says that metal ones did not come into use until the time of Claudius Caesar.

Signets are constantly alluded to in Scripture. The Hebrews called them nosed Sabaoth, and they appear to have been used among them from an early period, for we find that when Judah asks Tamar (Genesis xxxviii, 18) what pledge he shall give her she replies, "Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand."

They were worn on the finger, generally the index finger, and always on the right hand, as being the most honorable; thus (Jeremiah xxu, 24) we read: "As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniall, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence." The signets of the ancients were generally sculptured with religious symbols or the heads of their deities. The sphinx and the sacred beetle were favorite signets among the Egyptians. The former was adopted from that people by the Roman Emperor Augustus. The Babylonians followed the same eustom, and many of their signets, remaining to this day, exhibit beautifully sculptured images of BaalBerith and other Chaldean deities.

The impression from the signet-ring of a King gave the authority of a Royal Decree to any document to which it was affixed; and hence the delivery or transfer of the signet to anyone made him, for the time the representative of the King, and gave him the power of using the royal name.

• SIGNET OF TRUTH

The signet of Zerubbabel, used in the instructions of the Royal Arch Degree, is also there called the Signet of Truth, to indicate that the neophyte who brings it to the Grand Council is in search of Divine Truth, and to give to him the promise that he will by its power speedily obtain his reward in the possession of that for which he is seeking. The Signet of Truth is presented to the aspirant to assure him that he is advancing in his progress to the attainment of truth, and that he is thus invested with the power to pursue the search.

• SIGNET OF ZERUBBABEL

This is used in the American instructions of the Royal Arch Degree. It refers to a passage of Haggai (ii, 23) where God has promised that he will make Zerubbabel His signet. It has the same symbolic meaning as is given to its synonym the Signet of Truth, because Zerubbabel, as the head of the second Temple, was the symbol of the searcher after truth. But something may be said of the incorrect form in which it is found in many Chapters.

At least from the time when Cross presented an engraving of this signet in his Hieroglyphic Chart, and perhaps from a much earlier period, for he may possibly have only perpetuated the blunder, it has been represented in some Chapters by a triangular plate of metal. Now, an unattached plate of metal, in any shape whatsoever, is about as correct a representation of a signet as a walking-cane is of a piece of money.

The signet is and always has been a finger-ring, and so it should be represented in the ceremonies of the Chapter. What the peculiar device of this signet was—for every signet must have a device—we are unable to show, but we may suppose that it was the Tetragrammaton, perhaps in its well-known abbreviated form of a god within a triangle. Whether this was so or not, such a device would be most appropriate to the symbolism of the Royal Arch teaching.

• SIGNIFICANT WORD

Significant is malting a sign, from two Latin words meaning respectively make and sign. A significant word is a sign-making word, or a word that is equivalent to a sign; so the secret words used in the different Degrees of Freemasonry, and the knowledge of which becomes a sign of the possession of the Degree, are called significant words. Such a word Lenning calls ein bedeutendes Wort, which has the same meaning.

• SIGN OF ASSENT

Brother Henry F. Berry M. A., of the Public Record Office in Ireland, discovered among the papers of Archbishop Ussher preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin a complete Code of manual signs used by the Vietorine Canons at Saint Thomas's Abbey, Dublin. The Latin code contains the following item:

Pro signo annuendi, leva manum moderate et move non inversam sed ut exterior superfieies sit sursum.

For the sign of assent, lift the hand moderately, and move it, not inverted but so that the outer surface may be upwards.

The above code is published in the Journal of the Royal Society of At uaries of Ireland, part il. volume ii, 1892.

• SIGN OF DISTRESS

This is probably one of the original modes of recognition adopted at the revival period, if not before. It is to be found in the earliest ceremonies extant of the eighteenth century, and its connection with the legend of the Third Degree makes it evident that it probably belongs to that Degree. The Craft in the Eighteenth Century called it sometimes the Master's Clap, and sometimes the Grand Sign, which latter name has been adopted by the Freemasons of the Nineteenth Century, who call it the Grand Hailing Sign, to indicate its use in hailing or calling a Brother whose assistance may be needed.

The true form of the sign has unfortunately been changed by carelessness or ignorance from the ancient one, which is still preserved in Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe. It is impossible to be explicit; but it may be remarked, that looking to its traditional origin, the sign is a defensive one, first made in an hour of attack, to give protection to the person. This is perfectly represented by the European and English form, but utterly misrepresented by the American. The German Rite of Schroeder attempted some years ago to induce the Craft to transfer this sign from the Third to the First Degree. As this would have been an evident innovation, and would have contradicted the ritualistic history of its origin and meaning, the attempt was not successful.

• SIJEL, AL

The Recording Angel of Islam

• SILENCE

See Secrecy and Silence

• SILENT BROTHERHOOD

Dwellers in the Priories of Cluny and Hirsan in the eleventh century were placed under rigid discipline as to speech. Those of Cluny were the first to adopt the system of signs for daily intercommunication, which system, by consent or per missal, granted after application through three special messengers from the Priory of Hirsan, was adopted by that Priory in all its elaborateness, and indeed enlarged and perfected by the well-known Abbot William. The doctrine of a perfect silence in such extensive communities became noteworthy in history. These earnest and devoted men, under strong discipline, as Conversi or barbati fratres, Returned or Bearded Brethren, were encouraged in the Abbeys of the Middle Ages. Their labors were conducted in companies of ten each, under Deans of the Monastery, who were in turn instructed by Wardens and Superiors.

• SILOAM INSCRIPTION

An inscription accidentally discovered in 1880 by a native pupil of Schick, a German architect, who had long settled in Jerusalem. is chiseled in the rock that forms the southern wall at the channel which opens out upon the ancient Pool of Siloam, and is partly concealed by the water. The modern Pool includes the older reservoir, supplied with water by an excavated tunnel, 1708 yards long, communicating with the Spring of the Virgin, which is cut through the ridge that forms the southern part of the Temple Hill. The Pool is on the opposite side of the ridge, at the mouth of the Tyropoeon Cheesemakers valley, which was filled with rubbish, and largely built over. The inscription is on an artificial tablet in the rock, about nineteen feet from the opening upon the Pool.

The first intelligible copy was made by Prof. A. H.Sayce, whose admirable little work, called Fresh Light on the Ancient Monuments, gives full details. Doctor Guthe, in March, 1881, made a complete facsimile copy of the six lines, which read thus:

(Behold) the excavation! now this is the history of the excavation. While the excavators were still lifting up the pick, each towards his neighbor and while there were yet three cubits to (excavate there was heard) the voice of me than calling to his neighbor, for there was an excess in the rock on the right hand (and on the left). And after that on the day of excavating, the excavators had struck pick against pick, one against the other, the waters flowed from the spring to the pool for a distance of 1200 cubits. And (part) of a cubit mas the height of the rock over the head of the excavators.

The engineering skill must have been considerable, as the work was tortuous, and yet the excavators met at the middle. There is no date, but the form of the ztters show the age to be nearly that of the Moabite stone. Scholars place the date during the reign of Hezekiah and in that event appraise it as the oldest Hebrew inscription known. "He made the pool and the aqueduct and brought the water into the city" (Second Kings xx, 20). The discovery was an important one. Processor Sayce deduces the following:

The modern city of Jerusalem occupies very little of the same ground as the ancient one, the latter stood entirely on the rising ground to the east of the Tyropoeon valley, the northern portion of which is at present occupied by the Mosque of Omar, while the southern portion is uninhabited. The Tyropoeon valley itself must be the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, where the idolaters of Jerusalem burnt their children in the fire to Moloeh. It must be in the southern cliff of this valley that the tombs of the kings are situated," they being buried under the rubbish with which the valley is filled; and " among this rubbish must be remains of the city and temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Here, as well as in the now obliterated Valley of the Cheesemakers, probably lie the relies of the dynasty ox David.

Hebrew inscriptions of an early date have hitherto long been sought for in vain. Seals and fragmentary inscriptions have heretofore been discovered. Several of these seals have been found in Babylonia and Mesopotamia, and are regarded as memorials of the Jewish exiles; but the Schick discovery gives us a writing certainly as old as the time of Isaiah.

• SILVER AND GOLD

When Saint Peter healed the lame man whom he met at the gate Beautiful of the Temple, he said to him "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee" (Acts iii, 6); and he bestowed on him the gift of health. When the pious pilgrim begged his way, through all the perils of a distant journey, to kneel at the Holy Sepulcher, In his passage through poor and inhospitable regions, a crust of bread and a draft of water were often the only alms that he received. This has been symbolized in the ceremony of reception of a Knight Templar, and in it the words of Saint Peter have been preserved, to be applied to the allegorical pilgrimage there represented.

• SILVER CORD

In the beautiful and affecting description of the body of man suffering under the infirmities of old age given in the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, we find the expression "or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern: then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." Doctor Clarke thus explains these beautiful metaphors. The silver Cord is the spinal marrow; its loosening is the cessation of all nervous sensibility; the golden bowl is the brain, which is rendered unfit to perform its functions by the approach of death; the pitcher means the great vein which carries the blood to the right ventricle of the heart, here called the fountain; by the wheel is meant the great artery which receives the blood from the left ventricle of the heart, here designated as the cistern. This collection of metaphors is a part of the Scripture reading in the Third Degree, and forms an appropriate introduction to those sublime ceremonies whose object is to teach symbolically the resurrection and life eternal.

• SIMONIS, JOHN W.

A tactful and native factor in the Saint Johns Grand Lodge of the Most Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons in the State of New York independently formed about 1837, and headed by Harry C. Atwood, Master of York Lodge No. 367 of New York City. This was united with the old Grand Lodge of New York on December 27, 1850, by a public procession on Saint John's Day and suitable ceremonies at Tripler Hall. Brother Simons was noted for his knowledge of Masonic Jurisprudence and was also Grand Master of his State in 1861 (see History of Freemasonry in the State of New York, Ossian Lang, 1922, pages 134, 146).

• SIMORGH

A monstrous griffin, guardian of the Persian mysteries.

• SINAI

A mountain of Arabia between the horns of the Red Sea. It is the place where Moses received the Law from Jehovah, and where he was directed to construct the Tabernacle. Hence, says Lenning, the Scottish Freemasons make Mount Sinai a symbol of truth. Of the advanced Degrees, the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, or the Chief and Prince of the Tabernacle, refer in their instructions to this mountain and the Tabernacle there constructed.

• SINGAPORE, THE FOUNDER OF

With the same suddenness in which it began, the war with Japan in 1941 filled American papers, movies, and magazines with a continuing food of discussions and descriptions of islands, nations, cities, and men who, before Pearl Harbor, had been scarcely better known to the American public than Marco Polo or Prester John, and in doing so made us see of what importance to us had been the City of Singapore which, though a British port, cost us Americans by its fall five billion dollars and tens of thousands of men and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Coincidentally, we American Masons discovered, to our very great surprise, that Freemasonry had been at work "out there" almost as long as it had been at work here, and that it had in quietness and by peaceable means a part in Asiatic settlement beyond anything anybody could have believed possible. The discoverer and founder—a British writer says "almost the inventor"—of Singapore was Sir Stamford Rafiles. (The name has no connection with the verb "to raffle" but is the French form of the botanic name for the plant from which raffia comes.) He was born at sea July 5, 1781, the son of a merchant captain plying between England and the West Indies—the year in which Britain surrendered at Yorktown. After a small bit of schooling at Hammersmith he went to work for almost nothing in the offices of the East India Company—offices in which Charles Lamb and John Stuart Mill also were to work in after times. During the years of an iron apprenticeship in that ruthless corporation he worked as hard nights and Sundays on studying at home as he did in his office by day.

In 1805 he was sent out to be assistant-secretary in the Malay city of Penang, where he learned the native speech, came to love the people, and exhibited a religious tolerance (in that Mohammedan country) which was astonishing. "Mahomet's mission does not invalidate our Savior's"; he wrote; "one has secured happiness to the Eastern and one to the Western world, and both deserve our veneration." (While there he studied Hebrew and Greek, the Hebrew in order the better to understand Arabic.)

In 1806 Napoleon placed his Brother Louis on the throne of Holland and sent out a French Army to occupy Java, the first step of a Napoleonic scheme to conquer the whole of Asia. (The Nazis and Japanese studied Napoleon's Asiatic plans and strategy down to the last detail.) Raffles laid before the Governor General of India, Lord Minto, a military plan to crush the French in Java, prepared the way, and with Minto in 1811 drove them out. Raffles was appointed Lieutenant-Governor.

Lord Minto was an active Mason. On a coffee estate near Batavia was a small Lodge called Virtuitis et Artis Amici (Friends of Virtue and Arts), the Worshipful Master of which was Nicolas Englehardt, a former Dutch Governor of Java. With Minto present, Raffles received the first two Degrees. On July 5, 1813, he took the Third in Lodge De Vriendschap, at Sourabaya. In the years that followed, Sir Stamford went through black hours: Java went back to the Dutch; Minto died; Raffles' wife died, and after her their children. In 1816 he received the Rose Croix Degree in Batavia.

On his jot y back to England he stopped off to visit Napoleon on St. Helena. In a few months (after a second marriage) he went back to be Governor of Sumatra, and on the way visited Lord Hastings in India—also an ardent Mason. It was there and then that Raffles proposed the building of a city and great naval base at Singapore. Space does not permit a description of his labor thereafter, among them being his founding of the London Zoology Society. He died in April, 1826.

If a Freemason writes about the power Freemasonry has to shape men, to inspire them toward tolerance and enlightenment, and to cultivate in them lindliness and friendliness, non-Masons may be tempted to discount it by half on the grounds of enthusiasm or a favorable prejudice; but if any non-Mason, and concerned only with unvarnished facts, will begin with Sir Stamford Raffles (or Minto, or Hastings) and search out the Mystic Tie in Asia as it stretched from one man to another, even across languages and in the midst of wars, and across the barriers of race (Hindus, Malays, Filipinos, Chinese became Brothers), and see how Masonry led to schools; hospitals, orphanages and tolerance, he will be forced in the end to admit that the part taken by the Craft in the bringing of civilization and culture into the Far East was astounding—and all the more so, in that it had behind it no armies, no powers of public office, no wealth, and never employed intrigue or force.

• SIR

this is the distinctive title given to the possessors of the Degrees of Masonic Knighthood, and is borrowed from the heraldic usage. The word knight is sometimes interposed between the title and the personal name, as, for example, Sir Knight John Smith. English knights are in the habit of using the word Crater, or brother, a usage which to some extent is being adopted in the United States of America. English Knights Templar have been led to the abandonment of the title Sir because legal enactments made the use of titles not granted by the Crown unlawful. But there is no such law in America. The addition of Sir to the names of all Knights is accounted, says Ashmole, "parcel of their style." The use of it is as old, certainly, as the time of Edward I, and it is supposed to be a contraction of the old French Sire, meaning Seigneur, or Lord.

• SIRAT, AS or AL

See Al-Sirat

• SIROC

The Hebrew word n. A Significant word, formerly used in the Order of High Priesthood in the United States of America. It signifies a shoelatchet, and refers to the declaration of Abraham to Melchizedek, that of the goods which had been captured he would "not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet" (Genesis xiv, 23), that is, nothing even of the slightest value. The introduction of this word into some of the lower Capitular Degrees was an error of the ritualists.

• SISTER LODGES

Lodges are so called which are in the same Masonic Jurisdiction, and owe obedience to the same Grand Lodge.

• SISTERS BY ADOPTION

In the Lodges of the French Adoptive Rite this is the title by which the female members are designated. The female members of all androgynous, both sexes, Degrees are Sisters, as the male members are Brethren.

• SISTERS OF THE GILD

The attempt of some writers to maintain that women were admitted into the Medieval Confraternities of Freemasons fails to be substantiated for want of sufficient proof. The entire spirit of the Old Constitutions indicates that none but men, under the titles of Brethren and fellows, were admitted into these Masonic Gilds; and the first Code of Charges adopted at the Revival in 1717, declares that "the persons admitted members of a Lodge must be good and true men ... no women, etc."

The opinion that women were originally admitted into the Masonic Gild, as it is asserted that they were into some of the others, is based upon the fact that, in what is called the York Manuscript, No. 4, whose date as affixed to the Roll is 1693, we find the following words: "The one of the elders taking the Booke, and that hee or shee that is to be made mason shall lay their hands thereon, and the charge shall be given."

But in the Alnwick Manuscript, which is inserted as a Preface to the Records of the Lodge at Alnwick, beginning September 29, 1701, and which manuscript was therefore probably at least contemporary with that of York, we find the corresponding passage in the following words, "Then shall one of the most ancient of them all hold a book that he or they may lay his or their hands upon the said Book," etc.

Again in the Grand Lodge Manuscript, No. 1, whose date is 1583, we meet with the same regulation in Latin thus: Tunc unus er senioribus teneat librum et ille vet illi apposuerunt manus sub librum et tune praecepta deberent legi. This was no doubt the original form of which the writer of the York Manuscript gives a translation, and either through ignorance or clerical carelessness, the ille vet illi, instead of We or they, has been translated he or she. Besides, the whole tenor of the Charges in the York Manuscript clearly shows that they were intended for men only. A woman could scarcely have been required to swear that she "would not take her fellow's wife in villainy," nor make anyone a Free mason unless "he has his right limbs as a man ought to have."

It cannot be admitted on the authority of a mistranslation of a single letter, by which an a was taken for an e, thus changing ille into illa, or he into she, that the Masonic Gild admitted women into a Craft whose labors were to hew heavy stones and to ascend tall scaffolds.. Such never could have been the ease in Operative Masonry.

There is, however, abundant evidence that in the other Gilds, or Livery Companies of England, women or sisters were admitted to the freedom of the company. Herbert (History of the Livery Companies xi, page 83) thinks that the custom was borrowed, on the constitution of the Companies, by Edward III from the Ecclesiastical or Religious Gilds, which were often composed of both sexes. But there does not seem to be any evidence that the usage was extended to the Building Corporations or Freemasons Gilds. A woman might be a female grocer or haberdasher, but she could hardly perform the duties of a female builder.

• SIT LUX ET LUX FUIT

A motto frequently used in Freemasonry, although sometimes written, Luz ftat et Luz flit, signifying Let there be light, and there was light (Genesis i, 3); the strict translation from the Hebrew continues, "And the Lord took care of the light, that it was useful, and He divided the light from the darkness."

• SITUATION OF THE LODGES

A Lodge is, or ought to be, always situated due East and West, for reasons which are detailed in the articles on East and Orientation, which see.

• SIVAN

The Hebrew word ll'D. The ninth month of the Hebrew civil year, corresponding with the months May and June, beginning with the new moon of the former.

• SIX LIGHTS

The six lights of Symbolic Freemasonry are divided into the Greater and Lesser Lights, which see. In the American system of the Royal Arch there is no symbol of the kind, but in the English system there are six lights—three lesser and three greater—placed in the form of two interlaced triangles. The three lesser represent the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian Dispensations; the three greater the Creative, Preservative, and Obstructive Power of God. The four lesser triangles, formed by the intersection of the two great triangles, are emblematic of the four Degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry.

• SIX PERIODS

The Grand Architects' Six Period's constituted a part of the old Prestonian lecture in the Fellow Craft's Degree. It referred to the six days of creation, the six periods being the six days. It no longer forms a part of the lecture as modified by Doctor Hemming in England, although Brother Oliver devotes a chapter in his Historical Landmarks to this subject. It was probably at one time taught ill the United States of America before Brother Webb modified and abridged the Prestonian lectures, for Hardie gives the Six Periods in full in his Mozlitor, which was published in 1818. The Webb lecture, practiced in the United States, comprehends the whole subject of the Six Periods, which make a closely printed page in Browne's Master Kely, in these few words: "In six days God created the heavens and the earth, and rested upon the seventh day; the seventh, therefore, our ancient Brethren consecrated as a day of rest from their labors; thereby enjoying frequent opportunities to contemplate the glorious works of creation, and to adore their great Creator."

• SKELETON

A symbol of death. The ancient Egyptians often introduced a skeleton in their feasts to remind the revelers of the transitory nature of their enjoyments, and to teach them that in the midst of life we are in death. As such an admonitor a symbol it has been used in some of the advanced Degrees (see Skull).

• SKIRRET

In the English system the Skirret is one of the working-tools of a Master Mason. It is an implement which acts on a center-pin, whence a line is drawn, chalked, and struck to mark out the ground for the foundation of the intended Structure. Symbolically, it points to us that straight and undeviating line of conduct laid down for our pursuits in the volume of the Sacred Law. The Skirret is not used in the American system.

• SKULL

The skull as a symbol is not used in Freemasonry except in Masonic Templarism, where it is a symbol of mortality. Among the Articles of Accusation sent by the Pope to the Bishops and Papal Commissaries upon Which to examine the Knights Templar, those from the forty-second to the fifty seventh refer to the human skull, Cranium humanus, which the Templars were accused of using in their reception, and worshiping as an idol. It is possible that the Old Templars made use of the skull in their ceremony of reception; but Modern Templars will readily acquit their predecessors of the crime of idiolatry, and find in their use of a skull a symbolic design (see Baphomet).

Of this symbol of mortality, the skull, much has been written and when found of suitable service quoted with effect at Masonic meetings. About 1860 Brother J. S. Parvin of Iowa received a copy of a poem entitled Lines to a Skeleton as printed in a newspaper published at Glasgow, Scotland. He was struck with its beauty and used it in his Knight Templar work, he at that time being Eminent Commander of the local Commandery. A similar experience befell Brother Eugene S. Elliott of Wisconsin but brother Parvin is believed to have been first to use the poem as above described and it soon became vers popular and is still generally used. The popularity of the poem has caused it to be paraphrased by several Brethren, Denman S. Wagstaff, New Age Magazine, April 1917 (page 178); Newton Newkirk, .Missouri Freemason, October 29, 1904; and copies of others published by H. D. Loveland, California, Nortnan T. Cassette, and so on are in our possession but lack particulars of first place of publication.

However, the original also has its uncertainties. The Square and Compass, Denver, July, 1923, page 44, says "The poem was written by Robert Philip of Gormyre Cottage, Scotland. He wrote the verses unite Watching for 'body snatchers' in the parish churchyard of Torphichen where during the repairing of the church the unearthing of a skeleton suggested the subject." Clothes C. GX Hunt, (grand Secretary of Iowa's) has kindly investigated the matter for us, sprites "In 1816 the manuscript of the poem was found in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons at London near a perfect human skeleton. The attendant who found it handed it to the curator of the museum and he in turn sent it to the London Morning Chronicle for publication.

The first authentic record that we have of the poem is its appearance in the London Chronicle in 1816. It excited so much attention that a reward of fifty guineas was offered for information that would lead to the discovery of its author. This was without avail, however, as the author preserved his incognito and to this day no one knows who he was. Thus you will note the similarity in the fact that the author of the poem as well as the former occupant of the skeleton about whom it was written remain unknown."

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, 1922 (page 687), credits the ode to Anna Jane Vardill (Mrs. James Niven) and it did appear in the European Magazine, November, 1816, signed with the initial "V 2 But Brother Hunt points out that the poetess denied the authorship and the coincidence of the initial is the only thing to connect her with the poem. The Subject came up frequently in Notes and Queries, London, and usually was credited to Miss Vardill but has been claimed for J. D. Gordman and Robert Philip, the latter in 1826. The lines are listed as anonymous in Edith Granger's Index to Poetry and Recitations, Chicago, 1904, McClurg.

Behold this ruin, 'Twas a skull Once of ethereal spirit full. This narrow cell was Life's retreat, This space was Thought's mysterious seat. What beauteous visions filled this spot What dreams of pleasure long forgot? Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear Have left one trace on record here. Beneath this mouldering canopy Once shone the bright and busy eye: But start not at the dismal vold— If Social love that eye employed. If with no lawless fire it gleamed But through the dews of kindness beamed; That eye shall be forever bright When stars and sun are sunk in night. Within this hollow cavern hung The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue If Falsehood's honey it disdained, And when it could not praise was chained. If bold in Virtue's cause it spoke Yet gentle concord never broke— This silent tongue shall plead for thee When Time unveils Eternity. Say, did these fingers delve the mine Or with the envied rubies shine? To hew the rock or wear a gem Can little now avail to them. But if the page of truth they sought Or comfort to the mourner brought These hands a richer meed shall claim Than all that wait on Wealth and Fame. Avails it whether lottre or shod These feet the paths of duty trod? If from the bowers of Ease they fled. To seek Afflietion's humble shed. If Grandeur's guilty bribe they spurned, And home to Virtue's cot returned — These feet with angel wings shall vie, And tread the palace of the sky.

There is an earlier poem of 1808 by Lord Byron on the skull. He tells of it in his conversations with Medwin; "The gardener in digging discovered a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly friar or monk of the abbey (Newstead Abbey) about the time it was demonstrated. Observing it to be of giant size and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me of having it set and mounted as a drinking cup. I accordingly sent it to town, and it returned with a very high polish, and of a mottled color like tortoise shell."

Start not—nor deem my spirit fled: In me behold the only skull From which, unlike a living head, Whatever flows is never dull. I lived, I loved, I quaffed like thee: I died: let earth my bones resign: Fill up—thou canst not injure me The worm hath fouler lips than thine. Better to hold the sparkling grape, Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy brood And eirele in the goblet's shape The drink of Gods, than reptile's food. Where Once my wit, perchance hath shone, In aid of others let me shine And when, alas! our brains are gone, What nobler substitute than wine? Quaff while thou eanst, another race When thou and thine like me are sped, May rescue thee from earth's embrace And rhyme and revel with the dead. Why not? since through life's little day Our heads such sad effects produce Redeem'd from worms and wasting elay, This chance is theirs, to be of use.

• SKULL AND CROSS-BONES

They are a symbol of mortality and death, and are so used by heralds in funeral achievements. As the means of inciting the mind to the contemplation of the most solemn subjects, the skull and cross-bones are used in the Chamber of Reflection in the French and Scottish Rites, and in all those Degrees where that Chamber constitutes a part of the preliminary ceremonies of initiation.

• SLADE, ALEXANDER

On the title page of a 32-page pamphlet, The Free Mason Examined, published at London, England, 1754, the author is given as "Alexander Slade, Late Master of Three Regular Constituted Lodges, In the City of Norwich." Careful search among the archives failed to find a Brother who by the year 1751 had occupied the chair of three Norwich (England) Lodges. The pamphlet was reproduced in facsimile by the Lodge of Research, No. 2429, Leicester, 1926-7, with comments by Brother John T. Thorp, who also read a paper "Freemasonry Parodied in 1754 by Slade's Free Mason Ezamin'd" (see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1907, volume xx, pages 95-111).

Slade has not been identified with Norwich nor with Freemasonry and the purpose of this unknown writer is mysterious, Brother Thorp suggesting several possibilities: first, that this curious production is what it claims to be—an account of some Lodge ceremonies of that time; second, perhaps published to ridicule the claims made to a remote antiquity by the Grand Lodge of the Ancient; third, a misleading parody upon certain Masonic work of that period, and fourth, an outright invention prompted by pure greed, there being a lively demand for such information, Prichard's pamphlet of 1730 having four editions in a month and nearly twenty by 1754. Six editions of Slade's work were published four in 1754, the others bear no date, and Copies of all are rare.

• SLANDER

Inwood, in his sermon on Union Amongst Masons, says: "To defame our Brother, of suffer him to be defamed, without interesting ourselves for the preservation of his name and character there is scarcely the shadow of an excuse to be formed. Defamation is always wicked. Slander and evil speaking are the pests of civil society, are the disgrace of every degree of religious profession, are the poisonous bane of all brotherly love."

• SLAVE

See Free Born

• SLAVES, SERVANTS, ETC.

The first Lodge constituted in South Africa w as De Goede Hoop (Lodge of Good Hope), under a Dutch w arrant, in the Transvaal, 1772. The Minutes of this Lodge which was set up in a frontier country to bring a ray of light into a Dark Continent contain the most surprising set of entries ever written before or since by a Lodge Secretary; perhaps they are unique. In 1774 the Lodge rented a slave. By 1775 they had come to own a slave, named Slammat, then sold him for 170 rix dollars. In the following year the Secretary records show that the Lodge had purchased another, named September.

They sold September, and then bought two others, without names. The last slave sale was dated 1777. George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, in 1787 initiated ("with his own hands"!) twenty footmen, etc., in order to have personal servants to wait on him while he sat in the East of his Prince of Wales Lodge, No. 259. Bro. George Washington inherited a slave from his mother. But no such items as these, nor any other among Masonic curzosa, can ever rob Goede Hoop of its melancholy and surprising distinction of dealing in slaves. (See The Early Histor1y of the Lodge De Goede Hoop, by O. H. Bate; Cape Town, South Africa.)

G. G. Coulton (in Art and Reformation; page 74) records one case of the selling of a Freemason into slavery. A Normandy lady was so inordinately proud of a castle a Master Freemason built for her that she had him beheaded to guarantee against his making another like it. John Coustos was sent to the galleys by the Portuguese Inquisition for being a Freemason. Kings sometimes "bonded" a favorite physician, musician, Mason, etc., for life, a status which was serfdom in effect. In Tudor times more than one king sent out sheriffs to round up Freemasons to compel them by force to work on royal buildings. In 1907 Bro. Harry W. Gowen, of Halifax, N. C., wrote an exuberant booklet to prove that Georgia had in it the first and only Provincial Grand Master of Masons for America (1771-1776) and the only Provincial Grand Lodge for America; it was entitled The Stony of the Right Worshipful Joseph Montfort. On page 26 is a paragraph about a slave:

"During the early years of the records a Brother died in the West Indies, and by his will, left a slave, a negro woman, to Royal White Hart Lodge. Halifax" The Lodge loaned the slave to Mrs. Taylor, a Mason's widow, and after 3 few years appointed a committee to recover the slave and her increase; but whenever the committee Vent after the woman, Mrs. Taylor would hide her. The chase was ineffectually kept up for a few years, finally abandoned and was most amusing. " NOTE. On page 676 of this Encyclopedia Bro. Clegg writes: 'Royal White Hart Lodge, No. 2, Halifax, North Carolina, has met in an old frame building erected in 1769 and since mused exclusively and continuously for Lodge purposes. ' In two details Bro. Clegg was misled by his sources of information. The lower door was made and equipped for a school room and was so used for many years. The "old frame building" suggests a poor or decrepit building whereas it was a very fine structure. "We have a description of the temple written in 1820, when it was in a perfect state of preservation: the roof was of slate color; the building white with green blinds, red brick chimney and foundation, and mahogany doors; the ceiling of the lodge room (which is arched) was blue; the woodwork white, excepting the doors, which were mahogany." Gowen; page 26. It is a fact of large significance that in the Minute Books of Lodges and the Proceedings of Great Lodges of the United States from 1850 neither slavery nor the Civil War is almost ever mentioned, and still less is ever discussed It was assumed tacitly, as it necessarily had to be, that the Tenets of Freemasonry are incompatible with buying, selling, or owning men and women. But the slavery issue from 1850 to 1865 was brought into the Fraternity, or made to confront it, in an indirect way, and, as it were, through the back door; because when the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the second period of the Anti-Masonic Crusade joined the Anti-Masons in their attempt to obliterate the Fraternity, one of its modes of attack was to accuse Freemasons of being abolitionists.

The hierarchy of the Roman Church, though not always with the support of the lower clergy, and from 800 A.D. to World War II, has always been on the side of special privilege, ruling classes, slave and serf owners, etc., as against democracy, freedom, representative government, public schools, etc. Even in the North the hierarchy was outspokenly pro-slavery; in the South its hatred of Lincoln, emancipation, and abolitionism was malignant. Thus in a letter to Secretary of War Cameron in 1861, Archbishop Hughes wrote that "it should be understood that, with or without knowing it, if they [Catholics] are to fight for the abolition of slavery, then indeed they will turn away in disgust from the discharge of what would otherwise be a patriotic duty."

In a book published in 1941 the Roman Catholic historian Theodore Maynard described the Emancipation Proclamation as a "blot on Lincoln's record." (The records and documents in the case may be found in American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery Controversy, by Madeline Hooke Riee; Columbia University Press; New York; 1944. The Church did not disavow its pro-slavery after the war, but permitted the subject to die away. This book by Maynard, it is interesting to note, is one of a long series of propaganda volumes being published by Roman Catholic agencies in order to re-write American history in their own favor.) Note. Detailed week-by-week records of Roman Catholic attacks on Freemasonry may be found in diocesan newspapers between 1848/1865, North and South.

• SLIP

This technical expression in American Freemasonry, but commonly confined to the Western States, and not generally used, is of comparatively recent origin; and both the action and the word probably sprang up, with a few other innovations, intended as especial methods of precaution, about the time of the anti-Masonic excitement.

• SLOANE MANUSCRIPTS

There are three copies of the Old Constitutions which bear this name. All of them were found in the British Museum among the heterogeneous collection of papers which were once the property of Sir Hans Sloane.

The first Sloane Manuscript, which is known in the Museum as No. 3848, is one of the most complete of the copies extant of the Old Constitutions. At the end of it, the date is certified by the following subscription: finis p. me Eduardu Sankey decimo sexto die Octobris Anno Domini 1646. It was published for the first time, from an exact transcript of the original, by Brother Hughan in his Old Charges of the British Freemasons.

The second Sloane Manuscript is known in the British Museum as No. 3323. It is in a large folio volume of three hundred and twenty-eight leaves, on the fly-leaf of which Sir Hans Sloane has written "Loose papers of mine Concerning Curiosities." There are many manuscripts by different hands. The Masonic one is subscribed thus with the date and name of the writer, Haec scripta fuerunt p. me Thomam Martin, 1659, and this fixes the date. It consists of three leaves of paper six inches by seven and a half, is written in a small, neat hand, and endorsed Free Masonry. It was first published, in 1871, by Brother Hughan in his Masonic Sketches and Reprints.

The Rev. Brother A. F. A. Woodford thinks this an "indifferent copy of the former one." But this seems unlikely. The entire omission of the Legend of the Craft from the time of Lamech to the building of the Temple, including the important Legend of Euclid, all of which is given in full in the other manuscript, No. 3848, together with a great many verbal discrepancies, and a total difference in the eighteenth charge, would lead one to suppose that the former manuscript never was seen; or at least copied, by the writer of the latter. On the whole, it is, from this very omission, one of the least valuable of the copies of the Old Constitutions.

The third Sloane Manuscript is really one of the most interesting and valuable of those that have beers heretofore discovered. A portion of it, a small portion, was inserted by Findel in his History of Freemasonry; but the whole has been since published in the Voice of Masonry, a periodical printed at Chicago in 1872. The number of the manuscript in the British Museum is 3329, and Brother Hughan places its date at from 1640-1700; but he says that Messrs. Bond and Sims, of the British Museum, agree in stating that it is "probably of the beginning of the eighteenth century."

But the Rev. Brother Woodford mentions great authority, Wallbran, on manuscripts who declares it to be "previous to the middle of the seventeenth century." Findel thinks it originated at the end of the seventeenth century, and "that it was found among the papers which Doctor Plot left behind him on his death, and was one of the Sources whence his communications on Freemasonry were derived." It is not a copy of the Old Constitutions, in which respect it differs from all the other manuscripts, but is a description of the ritual of the Society of Free Operative Masons at the period when it was written. This it is that makes it so valuable a contribution to the history of Freemasonry, and renders t so important that its precise date should be fixed.

• SMARAGDINE, TABLET OF HERMES

The foundation of Hermetic knowledge, by an unknown author. Translated in the Oedipus Aegyptiacus.

• SMITH, GEORGE

Captain George Smith was a Freemason of some distinction during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Although born in England, he at an early age entered the military service of Prussia, being connected with noble families of that kingdom. During his residence on the continent it appears that he was initiated in one of the German Lodges.

On his return to England he was appointed Inspector of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, and published, in 1779, a Universal Military Dictionary, and, in 1783, a Bibliotheca Miliaris. Brother Smith devoted much attention to Masonic studies, and is said to have been a good workman in the Royal Military Lodge at Woolwich, of which he was for four years the Master. During his Mastership the Lodge had on one occasion, been opened in the King's Bench prison, and some persons who were confined there were initiated. For this the Master and Brethren were censured, and the Grand Lodge declared that "it is inconsistent with the principles of Masonry for any Freemason's Lodge to be held, for the purpose of making, passing, or raising Masons, in any prison or place of confinement (see Constitutions, 1784, page 349).

Brother Smith was appointed by the Duke of Manchester, in 1778, Provincial Grand Master of Kent, and on that occasion de livered his Inaugural Charge before the Lodge of Friendship at Dover. He also drew up a Code of Laws for the government of the Province, which was published in 1781.

In 1780 he was appointed Junior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge; but objections having been made by Heseltine, the Grand Secretary, between whom and himself there was no very kind feeling, on the ground that no one could hold two offices in the Grand Lodge, Smith resigned at the next Quarterly Communication. As at the time of this appointment there was really no law forbidding the holding of two offices, its impropriety was so manifest, that the Grand Lodge adopted a regulation (Constitutions, 1784, page 336) that "it is incompatible with the laws of this society for any Brother to hold more than one office in the Grand Lodge at the same time."

Captain Smith, in 1783, published a work entitled The Use and Abuse of Freemasonry: a work of the greatest utility to the Brethren of the Society, to Mankind in general, and to the Ladies in particular. The interest to the ladies consists in some twenty pages, in which he gives the "Ancient and Modern reasons why the ladies have never been accepted into the Society of Freemasons," a section the omission of which would scarcely have diminished the value of the work or the reputation of the author.

The work of Brother Smith would not at the present day, in the advanced progress of Masonic knowledge, enhance the reputation of its writer. But at the time when it appeared, there was a great dearth of Masonic literature—Anderson, Calcott, Hutchinson, and Preston being the only authors of any repute that had as yet written on the subject of Freemasonry. There was much historical information contained within its pages, and some few suggestive thoughts on the symbolism and philosophy of the Order. To the Craft of that day the book was therefore necessary and useful. Nothing, indeed, proves the necessity of such a work more than the fact that the Grand Lodge refused its sanction to the publication on the general ground of opposition to Masonic literature. Noorthouck (Constitutions, 1784, page 347), in commenting on the refusal of a sanction, says:

No particular objection being stated against the abovementioned work, the natural conclusion is, that a sanction was refused on the general principle that, considering the flourishing state of our Lodges, where regular instruction and suitable exercises are ever ready for all Brethren who zealously aspire to improve in masonical knowledge new publications are unnecessary on a subject which books cannot teach. Indeed, the temptations to authorship have effected a strange revolution of sentiments since the year 1720, when even ancient manuscripts were destroyed, to prevent their appearance in a printed Book of Constitutions! for the principal materials in this very work, then so much dreaded, have since been retailed in a variety of forms, to give consequence to fanciful productions that might have been safely withheld, without sensible injury, either to the Fraternity or to the literary reputation of the writers.

To dispel such darkness almost any sort of book should have been acceptable. The work was published without the sanction, and the Craft being wiser than their representatives in the Grand Lodge, the edition was speedily exhausted. In 1785 Captain Smith was expelled from the Society for "uttering an instrument purporting to be a certificate of the Grand Lodge recommending two distressed Brethren."

Doctor Oliver (Revelations of a Square, page 215) describes Captain Smith as a man "plain in speech and manners, but honorable and upright in his dealings, and an active and zealous Mason." It is probable that he died about the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth century.

• SMITH, WILLIAM

Brother Smith published The Freemasons Pocket Companion, 1736, at London, England.

• SMITH, WM.; HIS CONSTITUTIONS

When the Modern (first) Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania dedicated its Lodge house (Americans first Masonic building), and called "The Freemasons' Lodge," the dedication sermon was preached by William Smith, D. D., a member of Lodge No. 2, famous for his learning throughout the Colony. In 1781, the year that Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the Grand Lodge decided to reissue its Shiman Rezon, or Book of Constitutions, and appointed Bro. Smith to revise and to abridge it. He was to become Grand Secretary in 1783.

In 1782 he was Provost of the College of Philadelphia—now the University of Pennsylvania. He had the revision ready in 1781, and on November 22 of that year it was approved by Grand Lodge. But the printing was delayed. In 1782 Smith wrote a dedication to George Washington; in 1783 the Book was published. Though its editor could not know of it at the time, it was a book destined to be carried far, because it was to become the sanction and guide for Lodges in Tennessee, Kentucky, the West Indies Louisiana, Mexico, etc., and to be a model for later editors in other and future Grand Lodges.

Since the volume is now listed as a rare book, collectors may find useful its full title page: "Ahiman Rezon Abridged and Digested; as a Help to all that are. or would be Free and Accepted Masons, to which is added a Sermon, Preached at Christ-Church, Philadelphia, at a General Communication, Celebrated, Agreeable to the Constitutions, Monday, December 28, 1778, at the Anniversary of St. John the Evangelist, Published by Order of The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, by William Smith, D. D., Philadelphia; Printed by Hall and Sellers, M,Dcc, LXXXIII."

The 1778 London Edition of the Ahiman Rezon which presumably Bro. Smith had before him, has as its title: "Ahiman Rezon: or a Help to all that are, or could be Free and Accepted Masons." It mas the Third Edition. The first paragraph of Bro. Smith's Chapter I appears to have been of his om n composition, and may be guessed to have been a device for condensing into one sentence a series of exhortations which in the original version Laurence Dermott had spread over a number of pages. In this paragraph and in the chapter sub-head Bro. Smith uses a phrase which is peculiar, so peculiar that it is difficult to know why it has thus far escaped attention.

In the sub-head he says: "for the use of Operative Masons, in the American Lodges ..."; in the first line of the paragraph he says: "Before we enter upon the duties of the operative Mason," ete. (Italics ours.) Why did he say "Operative" instead of Speculative? (Two or three other Books of Constitutions afterwards repeated these phrases, Massachusetts being one of them.) one can only surmise that he took "operative" to mean Masons who operate a Lodge, the officers, tiler, janitor, etc.; this surmise has a support in his describing the duties of the "Operative Mason," "in the various offices and stations to which he may be called in the Lodge ..." In any event this misreading of the meaning of "Operative" supports a statement made elsewhere in this Supplement to the effect that the first American Masons were often themselves uninstructed on Craft practices, and in the dark about its customs and Landmarks.

Note. The Book of Constitutions prepared by Thaddeus Mason Harris for the new United Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. and which he printed in 1798, was a revision of an earlier Book; Harris also uses the phrase "for Operative Masons.'

• SMITTEN BUILDER

The old lectures used to say "The veil of the Temple is rent, the builder is smitten, and we are raised from the tomb of transgression." Brother Hutchinson, and after him Doctor Oliver, apply the expression, The smitten builder, to the crucified Savior, and define it as a symbol of His divine mediation; but the general interpretation of the symbol is, that it refers to death as the necessary precursor of immortality. In this sense, the smitten builder presents, like every other part of the Third Degree, the symbolic instruction of eternal life.

• SNOW, JOHN

A distinguished lecturer on Freemasonry, who was principally instrumental in introducing the system of Webb, of whom he was a pupil, into the Lodges of the Western States. He was also a Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ohio, and was the founder and first Grand Commander of the first Grand Encampment of Knights Templar in the same State. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, February 25, 1780; was initiated into Freemasonry in Mount Vernon Lodge, of Providence, in 1809, and died May 16,1852, at Worthington, Ohio.

• SNOWS

See Rains

• SOANE, GEO., HIS ROSICRUCIAN THEORY

In his Curiosities of Literature; and Book of the Months (London; 1849), Vol. II., page 35, George Soane, a non-Mason, published one of the earliest essays in the attempt to prove that Freemasonry originated in Rosicrucianism. It is written by an intelligent, well read antiquarian who has neither a fool nor a fanatic; it is therefore the more useful as a specimen of the kind of theories which even the well-informed entertained before much was known about Masonic history. Some takes it for granted that Freemasonry was invented in 1717 by a few gentlemen inspired by antiquarian curiosity; the symbols and ceremonies and their attribution by the Masons to the old builders he dismisses as "trash." (There were some Masons in 1849 who held a similar theory.) Those ceremonies and symbols had a queer and occult look to him (it did not occur to him that as a non-Mason he could have no knows ledge of them), therefore he cast about among the "queer fish" of occult and pseudo-occult "societies" current in 1717 to see if he could find one "similar" to the Craft, and at the same time "older." Rosicrucian~ ism appeared to him to fill the bill. His history of Rosicrucianism is not made of the facts as now known. He traced it to a pamphlet written by John Valentine Andrea, and more especially to a second edition of 1617 entitled Fama Frater witatis (published by Cassel). He took it that in consequence of this putative "revelation" an organized fraternity ensued; and that this fraternity emerged in 1717 under the disguise of Freemasonry. These notions have gone the way of all flesh. Rosicrucianism was never anything more than a book, a name, a rumor, a nickname for anything queer, archaic, occult until in the Nineteenth Century a small group of English Masons organized a side order under that label. Andrea could not have fathered Masonry in l717 because there had been Speculative Lodges before that date, and there had been Operative Lodges many centuries before.

The discovery of the Regius and Cooke MSS. destroyed the last vestige of any feasibility Soane's theory may ever have had. That theory would be no longer of any importance were it not that a Masonic writer or lecturer now and then repeats Soane's argument, a thing possible only to those w ho have never read an authentic historic of the Fraternity.

• SOCIAL CHARACTER OF FREEMASONRY

Freemasonry attracts our attention as a great social Institution. Laying aside for the time those artificial distinctions of rank and wealth, which, however, are necessary in the world to the regular progression of society, its members meet in their Lodges on one common level of brotherhood and equality. There virtue and talent alone claim and receive pre-eminence, and the great object of all is to see who can best work and best agree. There friendship and fraternal affection are strenuously inculcated and assiduously cultivated, and that great mystic tie is established which peculiarly distinguishes the society. Hence is it that Washington has declared that the benevolent purpose of the Masonic Institution is to enlarge the sphere of social happiness, and its grand object to promote the happiness of the human race.

• SOCIAL STATUS OF MASONS

The damage done by the barbarians when they devastated France and Italy in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries was in the long run not as great as was the consequence of the caste system which they rooted so deeply in Europe that it has not yet been eradicated. At the top were the kings, nobles, and the prelates; next afterwards came patricians and knights and later, squires; at the bottom were slaves (slavery was still in practice in Britain in the Eighteenth Century); next above the slaves were the cotters, next above them were the villains, and next above the villains were working men, consisting of craftsmen and farmers. According to the dogma of the original barbarism God Himself had created these castes or classes, and it was not only illegal but impious for a man to presume to climb up and out "of the station in which God has seen fit to place him." Where did the Medieval Masons stand in this hierarchy of castes? The majority of the pages in the histories of the Fraternity now extant ask the question, What were the Masons? The question raised here is, Who were the Masons? The who is of equal importance to the what for the solution of the problems of Masonic history.

The data as we now possess them, only half discovered and seldom thoroughly examined, give a confusing answer. On the whole, they give the impression that here, as on other counts, we shall find that Operative Freemasonry as regards social classes was in a peculiar sense an exception; that impression is of a piece with bodies of data of other kinds which show that in the first period the Fraternity was as "peculiar," as "unique" in many other ways also. During the century prior to the discovery of Gothic architecture in and around Paris, there had been developed to a high degree of perfection the art of the miniature painter, the master who ornamented vellum manuscript books with tiny miracles of almost perfect paintings. and who made most of the discoveries of form, composition, and perspective which made possible the "great painting" in Italy during the Renaissance—Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" is a masterly reproduction in the large of a miniature subject that had been perfected two centuries before his time.

Coincidentally with the discovery of the Gothic, miniature painting escaped from the monasteries, which were always tending to lapse into decay from sloth and ignorance (sloth itself was defined as "the idleness of the illiterate"), into the hands of lay artists, and almost immediately it was carried on and up into its own dazzling, great age in the reign of Philip Augustus, in which appeared those supreme artists, Honor, Jean Pucelle, Forrequet, Paul, Hermann Male-well, etc.

These miniaturists were not, as the cant of barbarian usage had it, laborers; they did not work in soil, stone, clay, bricks, wood, or the malodorous leather; they were pure artists in the most absolute sense of the word "pure"; and they were great artists —more than one of their masterpieces has actually been used to "ransom a kingdom." It is a revelation, therefore, to see where and how these artists stood in the social scheme.

First, they were personally so ignored that they were not suffered to sign their work (occasionally one of them slipped his first name, very small, into an end device), and their works were called not by the name of the artist but by the names of their owners. Second, they formed a gild, had a master and wardens, apprenticeships, fixed hours and wages, and thereby became established solidly in the same social bracket as brick-layers, paviors, cloth weavers, and leather workers, well down among the lower orders, so that if one of them was invited to dine in a patrician's home he ate at table with the servants. Though a craft of pure artists, the miniaturists were thus nevertheless a gild, and their station was that assigned to every other gild of craftsmen in the caste system of the times. The Freemasons' gild was like their gild, and yet m as unlike it.

The Masons went through a long hard apprenticeship; they had much schooling beside; they became in adult manhood the superior of any of their contemporaries in knowledge, intelligence, independence, skill, and they also were pure artists; and vet, because they were workmen, they were frozen into the "lower classes." Also, like the miniaturists, they were compelled to work, at least in theory, anonymously; Masters of Masons like William of Sens and Arnolfo, alongside their fellows, not only erected but also conceived, designed, and ornamented the cathedrals, yet the chroniclers of the time, monks most of them, and snobs to their marrow, give no credit to any Master of Masons for any cathedral, but tell us that Bishop Walter Montague "built" the cathedral at Laon, Bishop Maurice de Sully "built" Notre Dame, and so on, though no one of those bishops could have read a plan or calculated the scale of an arch if his life had depended upon it.

Yet on the other hand these Master Masons received oftentimes a princely wage, and consorted with gentlemen and high lords; Martin de Lonay, only one elf hundreds of others, when he was building the Abbey at St. Gilles, ate at the Abbots' table, stabled his horse in the Abbots' stalls, and received gifts of robes of state, collars, and had an honored place in solemn pageants, etc. At one end of it the Craft was solidly imbedded in the lowly craft gild and belonged to the lower orders; at the other end of it, it was embedded with equal solidity in the highest class of all; and as in France, so in England, where apprentices, usually of country stock, were taught the etiquette of the hall and the courtly manners of milord.

This meeting and mixture of social extremes inside the Crafts' own circle explains what, as against the known facts of the Middle Ages, would otherwise be inexplicable: the consorting of men of title with working men, the commingling of stone-masonry and pure art, the possession by hand workers of a better education than bishops had, the admittance of non-Operatives into some such status as Honorary membership, the freedom of Masons to work some years in one town and then move to another; their occupancy of a position at the very center of church life and yet their independence from church rule; their having their roots in the very soil of Medievalism and yet their finding out of truths so modern that even yet modern men have not caught up with them.

• SOCIETAS ROSICRUCIANA IN ANGLIA

See Rosicrucianism

• SOCIETAS ROSICRUCIANA IN SCOTIA

See Rosicrucianism

• SOCIETY ISLANDS

See Oceania

• SOCIETY OF THE CHAIN

See Chain, Society of the

• SOCIUS

The Sixth Degree of the Order of Strict Observance

• SOCIOLOGY AND FREEMASONRY

In the eyes of sociology a people consists of institutions, cultural agencies, established groups, organized societies, living traditions, mores, etc. These the sociologists study, classify, and describe as a botanist describes and classifies plants, impersonally, impartially, and without moral judgments. In sociology Freemasonry is classified as belonging to the group of cultural agencies, within the sub-classification of fraternities; the sociologist then attempts to discover the "sociologic laws" of fraternities; that is, principles, forms of organizations, and purposes common to them.

Except indirectly, or in passing, sociologists have never made a special study of Freemasonry according to their own categories and canons, but there have been signs lately to indicate that they are about to do so. Secret Societies; a Study of Fraternalism in the United States, by Noel P. Gist, Ph.D., Columbia University; New York; 1940; and "Sociology of Secret Societies" in the American Journal of Sociology; Vol. XI; 1906; p. 441, are together a fairly complete portrait of the Craft as it appears to the eyes of sociologists. Studies of a similar kind, though not technically sociologic, are:

Secret Societies Old and New, by Herbert Vivian; London; 1927 (the author does not possess sufficient knowledge for his task, and on some pages writes in a style that is either crude or sarcastic, it is impossible to say which). Hutton Webster's famous Secret Societies is sociologic but is not concerned with modern fraternities. Three of G. G. Coulton's works are histories, but they contain chapters which are in effect sociologic studies of Medieval Freemasonry: Medieval Panorama. Social Life in Britain; From the Conquest to the Reformation (Cambridge; 1919). Life in the Middle Ages; Macmillan; New York; 1930.

It is probable that only sociology itself will gain much from these researches, because its data long have been familiar to Masonic scholars to whom it is a commonplace that Freemasonry is a fraternity, and nas secrets, and has only fraternal purposes, is a free association, etc. It is however possible that from sociology Masons will gain a somewhat clearer knowledge of the Fraternity's place among other cultural agencies in modern society. Not long after the beginning of this century sociology came suddenly into a general popularity. Ward, Giddings, Veblen, Ross, etc., were suddenly catapulted into a place among best-sellers alongside popular novelists; even practical politicians began to study these volumes in the hopes of finding a magic key to their own problems; a few adventurers made fortunes out of exploiting the half-conscious fears of the populace, and a cheap and trashy book, called The Rising Tide of Color, foretold a global war between the White race and the Yellow, or even the Black, and this was viewed with huge alarms because it was assumed that the White race was "so vastly superior" to either of the other two that if it "fell" it would take civilization with it! These apocalyptic vaticination had a reincarnation in the "ideologies" of Fascism and Naziism under the label of "racism," though confusion became confounded when the Teutonic champion of the White race discovered to their delighted military surprise that the Japanese are "White Aryans."

This episode of lunacy was a debacle for sociology, from which it has not recovered, and will not until it ceases to consider itself a "science" and becomes in name as well as in fact, what Boas affirmed it to be: a series of non-scientific studies of, and of thought about, the subject of race, and of such subjects as are auxiliary to it. Like psychology, sociology had become maddened by too many theories, has fallen from popular interest, and been dropped out of a large number of colleges; even sociologists themselves, some of them, have lost confidence in their own subject.

In spite of its thus having been temporarily derailed, sociology has established one truth, and there is no possibility of its being questioned again: it has discovered that men are not born as individuals, separate and mutually-repellent atoms, which can be brought into groups only by preaching idealism, or by force, or by "moral suasion," as the orthodox sociologic theory of the Nineteenth Century had said they were. Men are in groups before they are born, because to be so is in their anatomy, their physiology, is the way they are made. A baby already is a member of a family, belongs to a society of blood relatives, is in a community, is a member of a people, is predestined to attend school, and to be a citizen, and to enter free associations—he cannot evade or avoid these "sociologic" engagements any more than he can avoid eating or sleeping.

Society itself, as sociology employs the term, consists not of separate, atomistic individuals (still less of "rugged" individuals), but to begin with consists of institutions, groups, and associations; they are the units by which it is comprised. It is at this point, and in these terms, that Freemasonry is in the field of sociology, and may be sociologically studied. Its regalia, its charity, its Ritual and symbols, these are of no concern of sociology; on the other hand free associations do belong to sociology, and a Lodge therefore, as a Lodge, belongs to it because it is one of many forms of free associations.

• SODALITIES

From the Latin word meaning Companion. Societies or companies of friends or companions assembled together for a special purpose. Such confraternities, under the name of Sodalitia, were established in Rome, by Cato the Censor, for the mutual protection of the members. As their proceedings were secret, they gave offense to the government, and were suppressed, 80 B.C., by a Decree of the Senate, but were afterward restored by a law of Clodius. The name is applied in the Roman Catholic Church to associations of persons for charitable or devotional purposes.

• SOFISM

The Sofis were a mystical sect which greatly prevailed in Eastern countries, and especially in Persia, whose religious faith was supposed by most writers to embody the secret doctrine of Mohammedanism. Sir John Malcolm ( History of Persia, chapter xx) says that they have among them great numbers of the wisest and ablest men of the East, and since his time the sect has largely increased. The name is most probably derived from the Greek wisdom; and Malcolm states that they also bore the name of philosaufs, in which we may readily detect the word philosophers. He says also: "The Mohammedan Sofis have endeavored to connect their mystic faith with the doctrine of their prophet, who, they assert, was himself an accomplished Sofi."

The principal Sofi writers are familiar with the opinions of Aristotle and Plato, and their most important works abound with quotations from the latter. Sir John Malcolm compares the school of Sofism with that of Pythagoras. It is evident that there is a great similarity between Sofism and Gnosticism, and all the features of the biofic initiation remind us very forcibly of those of the Masonic 'the object of the system is the attainment of Truth; and the novice is invited "to embark on the sea of doubt," that is, to commence his investigations, which are to end in its discovery.

There are four stages or degrees of initiation: the first is merely preliminary, and the initiate is required to observe the ordinary rites and ceremonies of religion for the sake of the vulgar, who do not understand their esoteric meaning. In the Second Degree he is said to enter the pale of Sofism, and exchanges these external rites for a spiritual worship.

The Third Degree is that of Wisdom, and he who reaches it is supposed to have attained supernatural knowledge, and to be equal to the angels. The Fourth and last degree is called Truth, for he has now reached it, and has become completely united with Deity. They have, says Malcolm, secrets and mysteries in every stage or degree which are never revealed to the profane, and to reveal which would be a crime of the deepest turpitude.

The tenets of the sect, so far as they are made known to the world, are, according to Sir William Jones (Asiatic Researches ii, page 62), "that nothing exists absolutely but God; that the human soul is an emanation of His essence, and, though divided for a time from its heavenly source, will be finally reunited with it; that the highest possible happiness will arise from its reunion; and that the chief good of mankind in this transitory world consists in as perfect a union with the Eternal Spirit as the incumbrance of a mortal frame will allow." It is evident that an investigation of the true system of these Eastern mysteries must be an interesting subject of inquiry to the student of Freemasonry; for Godfrey Higgins is hardly too enthusiastic in supposing them to be the ancient Freemasons of Mohammedanism.

His views are thus expressed in the second volume of his Anacalypsis (page 301): a wonderful work—wonderful for the vast and varied learning that it exhibits; but still more so for the bold and strange theories which, however untenable, are defended with all the powers of a more than ordinary intellect. "The circumstances," he says, "of the gradation of ranks, the initiation, and the head of the Order in Persia being called Grand Master, raise a presumption that the Sofia were, in reality, the Order of Masons." Without subscribing at once to the theory of Godfrey Higgins, we may well be surprised at the coincidences existing between the customs and the dogmas of the Sofis and those of the Freemasons, and we would naturally be curious to investigate the uses of the close communication which existed at various times during the Crusades between this Mohammedan sect of philosophers and the Christian Order of Templars. C. W. King, in his learned treatise on the Gnostics, seems to entertain a similar idea of this connection between the Templars and the Sofis.

He says that, Inasmuch as these Sofis were composed exclusively of the learned amongst the Persians and Syrians, and learning at that time meant little more than a proficiency in medicine and astrology, the two points that brought the Eastern sages into amicable contact with their barbarous invaders from the West, it is easy to see how the latter may have imbibed the secret doctrines simultaneously with the science of those who were their instructors in all matters pertaining to science and art.

The Sofi doctrine involved the grand idea of one universal creed, which could be secretly held under any profession of an outward faith: and in fact took virtually the same view of religious systems as that in which the ancient philosophers had regarded such matters.

• SOFTAS

Students in the universities of Islam.

• SO HELP ME GOD

The usual observation or imprecation affixed in modern times to oaths, and meaning, May God so help me as I keep this vow.

• SOJOURNER

See Principal Sojourner

• SOJOURNERS' CLUB, THE NATIONAL

According to data in its own publications the National Sojourners' Club, like the Masonic Fraternity itself, is unable to put its finger on the exact place and date of its origin. More or less tentative experiments, made at widely- separated places and in different years, both proved the need of and prepared the way for it. As Sojourners' Club was founded by army officers (from other services, also) in Manila, P. I., in 1900, it: finally became Manila Lodge, No 342, on October 10, 1901. Another club of Sojourners appeared in the same city, in 1907, Manila being then, as it is non fruitful in Masonic origins, and, it may well be destined to be a Mother City of Freemasonry in the Far East where it maw have nobody can tell how large a future.

The present organization in America began when fifteen officers met at the Hamilton Club in Chicago (which is among clubs what Manila is among cities, for it is a mother of clubs), in 1917. A formal organization was completed February 28, 1918 Membership was made eligible to commissioned officers in the uniformed services who are Masons; patriotism was proclaimed its chief tenet. At the first meeting twenty-four were present; Captain F. C. Russell was elected President.

The roster of its local and national officers contains names made famous the World over by two World Wars; and also contained at least one President of the United States. Masons in the services on land and sea will always find each other out and form circles regardless of difficulties, for the Mystic Tie means much to them. For two centuries the Craft has tried out Army Lodges, Navy Lodges, Lodges on board ship, Mariners' Lodges, Ambulatory Lodges but they have not everywhere been satisfactory. The Sojourners is not a Lodge but a club, and it may in the future be proved to have found the most satisfactory formula for Masonic fellowship among Masons in the armed services.

• SOJOURNERS, NATIONAL

See National Sojourners

• SOLDIERS OF CHRIST

Milites Christi is the title by which Saint Bernard addressed his exhortations to the Knights Templar. They are also called by a more complete Latin title in some of the old documents, Militia Templi Salomonis, meaning The Chivalry of the Temple of Solomon; but their ancient Statutes were entitled Regina pauperum commilitonum Templi Salomonis, meaning The Rule of the poor fellow-soldiers of the Temple of Solomon; and this is the title by which they are now most generally designated.

• SOLI SANCTISSIMO SACRUM

Latin, meaning Sacred to the most holy Sun. Mentioned in the Twenty-eighth Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SOLOMON

In writing the life of King Solomon from a Masonic point of view, it is impossible to omit a reference to the legends which have been preserved in the Masonic system.

But the writer, who, with this preliminary notice, embodies them in his sketch of the career of the wise King of Israel, is by no means to be held responsible for a belief in their authenticity. It is the business of the Masonic biographer to relate all that has been handed down by tradition in connection with the life of Solomon; it will be the duty of the severer critic to seek to separate out of all these materials that which is historical from that which is merely mythical, and to assign to the former all that is valuable as fact, and to the latter all that is equally valuable as symbolism. But it must constantly be kept in mind that the chronology of early Jewish history is obscure. Periods given in the books of Moses are in round numbers and seem based only on tradition. Only when the biblical dates can be checked by external means, as for example by the records of Assyria, may definite dates be accepted with any certainty. Such is the conclusion of the Dictionary of Dates (Nelson's Encyclopedic Library).

Solomon, the King of Israel, the son of David and Bathsheba, ascended the throne of his kingdom 2989 years after the creation of the world, and 1015 years before the Christian era. He was then only twenty years of age, but the youthful monarch is said to have commenced his reign with the decision of a legal question of some difficulty, in which he exhibited the first promise of that wise judgment for which he was ever afterward distinguished.

One of the great objects of Solomon's life, and the one which most intimately connects him with the history of the Masonic institution, was the erection of a temple to Jehovah. This, too, had been a favorite design of his father David. For this purpose, that monarch, long before his death, had numbered the workmen whom he found in his kingdom; had appointed the overseers of the work, the hewers of stones, and the bearers of burdens; had prepared a great quantity of brass, iron, and cedar; and had amassed an immense treasure with which to support the enterprise.

But on consulting with the Prophet Nathan, he learned from that holy man, that although the pious intention was pleasing to God, yet that he would not be permitted to carry it into execution, and the divine prohibition was proclaimed in these emphatic words: "Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars; thou shalt not build a house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight." The task was, therefore, reserved for the more peaceful Solomon.

Hence, when David was about to die, he charged Solomon to build the Temple of God as soon as he should have received the kingdom. He also gave him directions in relation to the construction of the edifice, and put into his possession the money, amounting to ten thousand talents of gold and ten times that amount of silver, which he had collected and laid aside for defraying the expense. Solomon had scarcely ascended the throne of Israel, when he prepared to carry into execution the pious designs of his predecessor. For this purpose, however, he found it necessary to seek the assistance of Hiram, King of Tyre, the ancient friend and ally of his father.

The Tyrians and Sidonians, the subjects of Hiram, had long been distinguished for their great architectural skill; and, in fact, many of them, as the members of a mystic operative society, the Fraternity of Dionysian Artificers, had long monopolized the profession of building in Asia Minor. The Jews, on the contrary, were rather more eminent for their military valor than for their knowledge of the arts of peace, and hence King Solomon at once conceived the necessity of invoking the aid of these foreign architects, if he expected to complete the edifice he was about to erect, either in a reasonable time or with the splendor and magnificence appropriate to the sacred object for which it was intended. For this purpose he addressed the following letter to King Hiram: Know thou that my father would have built a temple to God, but was hindered by wars and continual expeditions, for he did not leave off to overthrow his enemies till he made them all subject to tribute. But I give thanks to God for the peace I, at present, enjoy, and on that account I am at leisure, and design to build a house to God. for God foretold to my father, that such a house should be built by me wherefore I desire thee to send some of thy subjects with mine to Mount Lebanon, to cut down timber for the Sidonians are more skillful than our people in cutting of wood. as for wages to the hewers of wood, I will pay whatever price thou shalt determine. Hiram, mindful of the former amity end alliance that had existed between himself and David, was disposed to extend the friendship he had felt for the father to the son, and replied, therefore, to the letter of Solomon in the following epistle:

It is fit to bless God that he hath committed thy father's government to thee, who art a wise man endowed with all virtues.

As for myself, I rejoice at the condition thou art in and will be subservient to thee in all that thou sendest to me about; for when, by my subjects I have cut down many and large trees of cedar and cypress wood, I will send them to sea and will order my subjects to make floats of them. and to sail to what places soever of thy country thou shalt desire and leave them there, after which thy subjects may carry them to Jerusalem. But do thou take care to procure us corn for this timber which we stand in need of, because we inhabit in an island.

Hiram lost no time in fulfilling the promise of assistance which he had thus given; and accordingly we are informed that Solomon received thirty-three thousand six hundred workmen from Tyre, besides a sufficient quantity of timber and stone to construct the edifice which he was about to erect. Hiram sent him, also, a far more important gift than either men or materials, in the person of an able architect, "a curious and cunning workman," whose skill and experience were to be exercised in superintending the labors of the craft, and in adorning and beautifying the building. Of this personage, whose name was also Hiram, and who plays so important a part in the history of Freemasonry, an account will be found in the article Hiram Abif, to which the reader is referred.

King Solomon commenced the erection of the Temple on Monday, the second day of the Hebrew month Zif, which answers to the twenty-first of April, in the year of the world 2992, and 1012 years before the Christian era. Advised in all the details, as Masonic tradition informs us, by the wise and prudent counsels of Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif, who, with himself, constituted at that time the three Grand Masters of the Craft, Solomon made every arrangement in the disposition and government of the workmen, in the payment of their wages, and in the maintenance of concord and harmony which should insure despatch in the execution and success in the result. To Hiram Abif was entrusted the general superintendence of the building, while subordinate stations were assigned to other eminent artists, whose names and offices have been handed down in the traditions of the Order.

In short, the utmost perfection of human wisdom was displayed by this enlightened monarch in the disposition of everything that related to the construction of the stupendous edifice. Men of the most comprehensive minds, imbued with the greatest share of zeal and fervency, and inspired with the strongest fidelity to his interests, were employed as masters to instruct and superintend the workmen; while those who labored in inferior stations were excited to enthusiasm by the promise of promotion and reward. The Temple was at length finished in the month Bul, answering to our November, in the year of the world 3000, being a little more than seven years from its commencement. As soon as the magnificent edifice was completed, and fit for the sacred purposes for which it was intended, King Solomon determined to celebrate the consummation of his labors in the most solemn manner.

For this purpose he directed the Ark to be brought from the king's house, where it had been placed by King David, and to be deposited with impressive ceremonies m the holy of holier beneath the expanded wings of the cherubim This important event is commemorated in the beautiful ritual of the Most Excellent Master's Degree. Our traditions inform us, that when the Temple was completed, Solomon assembled all the heads of the Tribes, the Elders and Chiefs of Israel to bring the Ark up out of Zion, where King David had deposited it in a tabernacle until a more fitting place should have been built for its reception. This duty, therefore, the Levites now performed, and delivered the Ark of the Covenant into the hands of the Priests, who fixed it in its place in the center of the Holy of Holies.

Here the immediate and personal connection of King Solomon with the Craft begins to draw to a conclusion. It is true, that he subsequently employed those worthy Freemasons, whom the traditions say, at the completion and dedication of the Temple, he had received and acknowledged as Most Excellent Masters, in the erection of a magnificent palace and other edifices, but in process of time he fell into the most grievous errors; abandoned the path of truth; encouraged the idolatrous rites of Spurious Freemasonry; and, induced by the persuasions of those foreign wives and concubines whom he had espoused in his later days, he erected a fane for the celebration of these heathen mysteries, on one of the hills that overlooked the very spot where, in his youth, he had consecrated a temple to the one true God.

It is, however, believed that before his death he deeply repented of this temporary aberration from virtue, and in the emphatic expression, "Vanity of vanities! all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes I, 2), he is supposed to have acknowledged that in his own experience he had discovered that falsehood and sensuality, however they may give pleasure for a season, will, in the end, produce the bitter fruits of remorse and sorrow.

That King Solomon was the wisest monarch that swayed the scepter of Israel, has been the unanimous opinion of posterity.

So much was he beyond the age in which he flourished, in the attainments of science, that the Jewish and Arabic writers have attributed to him a thorough knowledge of the secrets of magic, by whose incantations they suppose him to have been capable of calling spirits and demons to his assistance; and the Talmudists and Mohammedan doctors record many fanciful legends of his exploits in controlling these ministers of darkness. As a naturalist, he is said to have written a work on animals of no ordinary character, which has, however, perished; while his qualifications as a poet were demonstrated by more than a thousand poems which he composed, of which his epithalamium on his marriage with an Egyptian princess and the Book of Ecclesiastes alone remain. He has given us in his Proverbs an Opportunity of forming a favorable opinion of his pretensions to the character of a deep and right-thinking philosopher; while the long peace and prosperous condition of his empire for the greater portion of his reign, the increase of his kingdom in wealth and refinement, and the encouragement which he gave to architectures the mechanic arts, and commerce, testify his profound abilities as a sovereign and statesman- After a reign of forty years he died, and with him expired the glory and the power of the ancient Hebrew Empires

• SOLOMON'S TEMPLE, BUILDERS OF

In the Cooke MS, written between 1410-1450, is imbedded the oldest Masonic tradition about Solomon's Temple, w hereby is meant the oldest adopted by Masons, because the unknown author of the document drew much of his materials from non-Masonic books. Beginning at line 539 and extending to line 572 the MS. states that when the Israelites came from Egypt to Jerusalem they brought Masonry (architecture) with them.

David began the Temple; "he loved well Masons ..." But the Temple was made in Solomon's time. He had 80,000 Masons employed. (At the American equivalent of $3.00 per day, that would total $240,000 per day, a yearly payroll of 300 working days of $72,000,000!) The MS. states that "the King's son of Tyre" was Solomon's Master Mason; this would normally be taken to mean the son of the King of Tyre. David had given Masons their charges; Solomon confirmed them, though this is admittedly taken from "other chronicles" and is written "in old books of Masonry" (architecture). Solomon taught them manners, "but little different from the manners that now be used."

It is evident that the author is not here writing down Masons' traditions, or he would have said so, since he was careful to give his sources; and he did not have the Boosts of Kings or Chronicles before him but drew from old chronicles, polychrontcons (universal histories), etc. Nor was he offering a history, or connected narrative; the fact is evident from the table of contents which can be made for the MS. and which in this connection are: Abraham teaches Euclid the science of geometry; Euclid creates the craft of Masonry; the Israelites learn Masonry in Egypt; from Solomon's Temple the author then leaps to Charles II (not known to whom this refers); to St. Alban of England; to Athelstan; then back to Egypt and to Euclid.

The first, or 1723, Edition of the Book of Constitutions (see ante page 11) has another account. It says that there were 3600 princes [or harodim, or provosts ] or Master-Masons ... with 80,000 Fellow Craftsmen who were "hewers of stone in the mountains" (in reality the quarry was in the hill under the Temple), and 70,000 laborers; in addition there was a special levy of 30,000, making in all 183,600. They were at work for seven and one-half years. At the rate of only $1.00 per day the cost for 183,600 for 2250 days would come to the large total of $413,100,000! (In a pseudo-learned foot-note it is curious to note that a Hebrew word bonai, pronounced bow-nay, is given as meaning a builder in stone; it is a reminder of another and more famous word. In another paragraph of notes on the next page an attempt is made to explain the name Hiram Abif.)

The Book of Kings (I, 5: 15, 16) has a census of the Temple workers: 70,000 workmen; 80,000 "hewers"; and 3600 overseers, or foremen. In the corresponding chapter in II Chronicles, these same numbers are given in two places, Ch. II, 5, and 18; perhaps its editor had two manuscripts before him and deemed it wisest to quote from both. His figures add to 153,600, or 30,000 less than the number given in the Book of Constitutions.

In a widely-used version of the Monitorial (or Exoteric) Work: "There were employed in its construction three Grand Masters, three thousand and three hundred Masters or Overseers of the work, eighty thousand Fellow Crafts, and seventy thousand Entered Apprentices or bearers of burdens."It is clear that the author of this enumeration (Preston originally?) was following the Old Testament and not the Old Constitutions —and the fact proves that Masons have never had an orthodox, infallible, unchanging text rigidly binding on them by law. So little was this the case that when the young Mother Grand Lodge prepared a second edition of the Constitutions of 1738 it altered the first part of it radically and at many points. Versions of the Old Charges differ among themselves. It is a reasonable theory that after the Edition of the Book of Constitutions of 1723 was read, a number of Time Intermorial Lodges discovered its accounts of the "history" to differ from theirs and made a clamor to have their own included.

(It is a paradox of the history of Solomon's Temple that though Solomon and his people were Jews, it was built not by Jews but by Tyrians, and working under Tyrian overseers; and these latter must have built it in the Tyrian style because in that period of history Masons were not taught architecture in terms of principles and pure geometry and engineering, but were rained to do only a given style of work—a Tyrian Mason would have said, "I can do Tyrian work but not Egyptian or Assyrian."

It is also a curious fact that just after the author of the Constitutions had said that the Jews were trained in architecture he then goes on to say that Solomon had to send to Tyre for architects !)The publishing of a cheap form of illustrated Bible about 1700 set everybody in England to reading it. one of the results was a wide spread amateur study of Hebrew; another was the discovery and popularity of Josephus' History of the Jews. The consequence to Masonry of the former was to introduce a few Hebrew words into its nomenclature, such as gibtim, harodim, bonay, etc.; the consequence of the latter was to introduce into the history of Solomon's period a set of traditions not in Kings and Chronicles, and a number of old Oriental tales about Solomon.

There was yet another source of Temple lore: the enthusiastic public interest in the two "great" models of the building exhibited for years in England, one by Schott, the other by Leon, each with a handbook, and of which at least one contained lore from the Talmud. Thus, the Solomon's Temple of the Ritual was constructed, as it were, and in a poetic sense, by at least seven different sets of architects, and not working together: the Old Charges, Book of Constitutions, Book of Kings, Book of Chronicles, Josephus, Schott's model, Leon's model.

But this commixing was not yet at an end; indeed, it was only at a beginning. For with Inigo Jones (during 1600-1652) the architectural style perfected by Palladio was brought from Italy into England, and almost at once began to replace the mixture of Tudor styles and the last vestiges of Gothic. Palladio was a modern style, but in essence was an adaptation of Greek; that is, more strictly, it made use of certain features of the classical Greek.

It was called Italian, Palladian, Classical, Neo-Classical, Grecian, etc. By the time of the 1723 Constitutions this had become the style, and had been for so long that everybody had forgotten Gothic; and the compilers of the Constitutions not only forgot (or did not know) that Freemasonry was a child of the Gothic, but they sneered at it as a piece of barbarism, and no doubt assumed that each and every fine building in the past, including Solomon's Temple, had been designed in the Italian style. There was thus introduced into the Craft traditions, and on top of Solomon's Temple, "another temple," a Neo-Classical one.

But even this was not the end. Once architects and amateurs became engrossed in Palladio, they were inevitably led back to Vitruvius, and through him discovered the genuine, classical Greek temple, which, unlike the Palladian adaptation, was composed of pillars and columns, with few or no walls, and 8 flattened down, simple roof without spires, or domes. or towers. The wonderful Greek columns were adopted into Masonic symbolism, where they became the Five Orders of Architecture.

What few data we have about the Esoteric Work indicate that until the middle of the Eighteenth Century, in both Britain and America, and by comparison with its rigidity afterwards, the Ritual was between 1700 and 1750 in a fluid condition. It is improbable that Preston, or any other one man, was responsible for the fixation; but it is probable that the general acceptance of Preston's system of Monitorial Lectures signalized the fact that the Ritual had become stable. When it did so the Temple in it was not Solomon's Temple, or any other in particular. It was wholly a symbolical Temple, called Solomon's for symbolic purposes, and it was "built" out of whatever the Ritualists needed from many styles and traditions.

They were not engaged as contractors to erect a London church; they were not historians or architects; they were Ritualists, great Ritualists, and they obeyed the laws of ritualism; and according to those laws historical or technological facts are of small importance; indeed, the fewer of them the better!

Their symbolic temple had something of Solomon's in it; yet it also came to a focus in a drama not about his building or Solomon's people or even (this is remarkable!) about himself, but about a Tyrs architect—a workman; the fact that Greek columns of 500 B.C. had no place in a Tyrian Temple on Jewish soil of 1000 B.C. did not disturb them. They introduced priests bowing toward the Inner Sanctum alongside London college professors lecturing on ethics and the curriculum of Medieval Schools. They had Greek columns alongside ancient, legendary pillars.

They put Euclid and Pythagoras cheek by jowl with Moses on the one hand and the English St. Albans (Thomas a Becket?) on the other. Historically and architecturally they had a museum of ruins, of anachronisms, solecisms, fallacies; ritualistically they had a masterpiece—and if Phidias had been a Ritualist he could not have built a better ritualistic temple. The once-burning question as to whether Solomon was the founder of Masonry or not (the Tyrians had been Masons long before Solomon!) answers itself as soon as the Masonic student sees the recorded, indisputable facts before him, and studies the Second and Third Degrees for himself.

Note. In 1723 the Constitutions give HA. as the Master of Masons, in 1738, as Deputy Grand Master. In a very revealing aside Anderson, or whoever wrote the paragraph gives as his authority "the traditions of the old Masons who talk much of these things."

What he meant probably was that they talked much to the Grand Lodge leaders whose iconoclasm was disturbing them. The Old Charges do not attribute the founding of Masonry to Solomon, but to Adam—itself another answer to the above referred-to "burning question"; if they give any one man the credit it was Euclid—a Greek, and a Greek whom the Medieval Church had both hated and feared. It also is significant that the oldest existing MS., the Regius, does not include Solomon's Temple—early Operative Lodges enjoyed a wide latitude in matters ritualistic and symbolic.

Medieval builders themselves either knew nothing about Solomon's Temple or else took no interest m it; among its few appearances among the cathedrals was Wursburg where the pillars J and B were set up in the porch.

The French Compagnonnage had a symbolic rite or symbolism about HA.·. but there is no known connection between that fraternity and early English Lodges- for some 200 years Englishmen and Frenchmen were almost completely out of touch with each other, what with wars and a conflict in religion; the majority of English tourists preferred to go to Italy, which became almost a tourist colony. It remained for Voltaire to rediscover the English and to bring them and their Loeke's philosophy and Newton's science to French attention. The fact helps to explain why Speculative Freemasonry is so purely English in origin.

• SOLOMON, HOUSE OF

Lord Bacon composed, in his New Atlantis, an apologue, in which he describes the Island of Bensalem—that is, Island of the Sons of Peace—and on it an edifice called the House of Solomon where there was to be a confraternity of philosophers devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. Nicolai thought that out of this subsequently arose the society of Freemasons, which was, he supposes, established by Elias Ashmole and his friends (see Micolai).

• SOLOMON, TEMPLE OF

See Temple of Solomon

• SOLSTICES

The days on which the sun reaches is greatest northern and southern declination, which are June 21 and December 22. Near these days are those in which the Christian church commemorates Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, who have been selected as the patron saints of Freemasonry for reasons which are explained in the article on the Dedication of a Lodge, which see.

• SOMALILAND

Sometimes called the Eastern Horn of Africa, south of the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean. Of the three districts, British, Italian, and French Somaliland, the last possesses a Lodge. It was erected at Jibuti under the Grand Lodge of France.

• SONGS OF FREEMASONRY

The song formed in early times a very striking feature in what may be called the domestic manners of the Masonic institution. Nor has the custom of festive entertainments been yet abandoned. In the beginning of the eighteenth century songs were deemed of so much importance that they were added to the Books of Constitutions in Great Britain and on the Continent, a custom which was followed in America, where all the early Monitors contain an abundant supply of lyrical poetry. In the Constitutions published in 1723, we find the well-known Entered Apprentice's song, written by Matthew Birkhead, which still retains its popularity among Freemasons, and has attained an elevation to which its intrinsic merits as a lyrical composition would hardly entitle it.

Songs appear to have been incorporated into the ceremonies of the Order at the revival of Freemasonry in 1717. At that time, to use the language of the venerable Doctor Oliver, "Labor and refreshment relieved each other like two loving Brothers, and the gravity of the former was rendered more engaging by the characteristic cheerfulness and jocund gayety of he latter."

In those days the word refreshment had a practical meaning, and the Lodge was often called from labor that the Brethren might indulge in innocent gaiety, of which the song formed an essential part. This was called harmony, and the Brethren who were blessed with talents for vocal music were often invited "to contribute to the harmony of the Lodge." Thus, in the Minute-Book of a Lodge at Lincoln, in England, in the year 1732, which is quoted by Doctor Oliver, the records show that the Master usually "gave an elegant Charge, also went through an Examination, and the Lodge was closed with song and decent merriment." In this custom of singing there was an established system. Each officer was furnished with a song appropriate to his office, and each Degree had a song for itself.

Thus, in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, we have the Master's Song, which, says Doctor Anderson, the author, is "to be sung with a chorus— when the Master shall give leave—either one part only or all together, as he pleases"; the Warden's Song, which was "to be sung and played at the Quarterly Communication"; the Fellow Craft's Song, which was to be sung and played at the grand feast; and, lastly, the Entered 'Prentiss' Song, which was "to be sung when all grave business is over, and with the Master's leave."

In the second edition the number was greatly increased, and songs were appropriated to the Deputy Grand Master, the Secretary, the Treasurer, and other officers.. For all this provision was made in the Old Charges so that there should be no confusion between the hours of labor and refreshment; for while the Brethren were forbidden to behave "'ludicrously or jestingly while the Lodge is engaged in what is serious or solemn," they were permitted, when work was over, "to enjoy themselves with innocent mirth."

The custom of singing songs peculiarly appropriate to the Craft at the Lodge meetings, when the grave business was over, was speedily introduced into France and Germany, in which countries a large number of Masonic songs were written and adopted, to be sung by the German and French Freemasons at their Table Lodges, which corresponded to the refreshment of their English Brethren. The lyrical literature of Freemasonry has, in consequence of this custom, assumed no inconsiderable magnitude; as an evidence of which it may be stated that Kloss, in his Bibliography of Freemasonry, gives a catalogue—by no means a perfect one—of two hundred and thirteen Masonic song-books published between the years 1734 and 1837, in the English, German, French, Danish, and Polish languages.

The Freemasons of the present day have not abandoned the usage of singing at their festive meetings after the Lodge is closed; but the old songs of Freemasonry are passing into oblivion, and we seldom hear any of them, except sometimes the never-to-be forgotten Apprentice's Song of Matthew Birkhead. Modern taste and culture reject the rude but hearty stanzas of the old song-makers, and the more artistic and pathetic productions of Mackay, and Cooke, and Morris, and Dibdin, and Wesley, and other writers of that class, have taken their place.

Some of these songs cannot be strictly called Masonic, yet the covert allusions here and there of their authors, whether intentional or accidental, have caused them to be adopted by the Craft and placed among their minstrelsy. Thus the well-known ballad of Tubal Cain, by Charles Mackay, always has an inspiring effect when sung at a Lodge banquet, because of the reference to this old worker in metals, whom the Freemasons fondly consider as one or the mythical founders of their Order; although the song itself has in its words or its ideas no connection whatever with Freemasonry. The first two verses are as follows:

Old Tubal Cain was a man of might, In the days when the earth whas young; By the fierce red light of his furnace bright The strokes of his hammer rung; And he lifted high his brawny hand On the iron glowing clear. Till the sparks rushed out in scarlet showers, As he fashioned the sword and spear And he sang, " Hurrah for my handiwork Hurrah for the spear and sword! Hurrah for the hand that shall wield them well, For he shall be king and lord ! To Tubal Cain came many a one, As he wrought by his roaring fire, And each one prayed for a strong steel blade, As the crown of his desire; And he made them weapons sharp and strong, Till they shouted loud for glee And gave him gifts of pearl and gold, And spoils of the forest free; And they sang, ' Hurrah for Tuhal Cain, Who hath given us strength anew! Hurrah for the smith! Hurrah for the fire! And hurrah for the metal true!"

Brother Burns's Auld Lang Syne is another production not verbally Masonic, which has met with the universal favor of the Craft, because the warm fraternal spirit that it breathes is in every way Masonic, and hence it has almost become a rule of obligation that every festive party of Freemasons should Close with the great Scotchman's invocation to part in love and kindness. But Robert Burns has also supplied the Craft with several purely Masonic songs, and his farewell to the Brethren of Tarbolton Lodge, beginning,

Adieu! a heart, warm, fond adieu, Dear Brothers of the mystic tie,

is often sung with fine effect at the Table Lodges of the Order.

As already observed, we have many productions of our Masonic poets which are talking the place of the older and coarser songs of our predecessors. It would be tedious to name all who have successfully invoked the Masonic muse. Masonic songs—that is to say, songs whose themes are Masonic incidents, whose language refers to the technical language of Freemasonry, and whose spirit breathes its spirit and its teachings—are now a well-settled part of the literary curriculum of the Institution. At first they were all festive in character and often coarse in style, with little or no pretension to poetic excellence. Now they are festive, but refined; or sacred, and used on occasions of public solemnity; or mythical, and constituting a part of the ceremonies of the different Degrees. But they all have a character of poetic art which is far above the mediocrity so emphatically condemned by Horace (see Poetry of Freemasonry).

• SON OF A FREEMASON

The son of a Freemason is called a Louveteau, and is entitled to certain privileges, for which see Louveteau and Lewis.

• SON OF HIRAM

A mixed tradition states that Aynon was a son of Hiram Abif, and was appointed master of the workmen who hewed the cedars and shaped the timber for the temple, and was recognized for his geometrical knowledge and skill as an engraver (see Aynon).

• SONS OF LIGHT

The science of Freemasonry often has received the title of Lux, or Light, to inculcate that mental and moral illumination is the object of the Institution. Hence Freemasons are often called Sons of light.

• SONS OF THE PROPHETS

we repeatedly meet in the Old Testament with references to the Beni Hanebiian, or Sons of the Prophets. These were the disciples of the prophets, or wise men of Israel who underwent a course of esoteric instruction in the secret institutions of the Nabiim, or prophets, just as the disciples of the Magi did in Persia, or of Pythagoras in Greece. "These sons of the prophets,;' says Stehelin (Rabbinical Literature i, page 16), "were their disciples, brought up under their tuition and care, and therefore their masters or instructors were called their fathers."

• SONS OF THE WIDOW

This is a title often given to Freemasons in allusion to Hiram the Builder, who was "a widow's son, of the tribe of Naphtali '" By the advocates of the theory that Freemasonry originated with the exiled House of Stuart, and was Organized as a secret institution for the purpose of reestablishing that house on the throne of Great Britain, the phrase has been applied as if referring to the adherents of Queen Henrietta, the widow of Charles 1. The name is also applied to a society of the third century (see Widow, Sons of the, also Widow's Son).

• SOPHISIENS, SACRED ORDER OF

Founded at Paris, early nineteenth century, by Cavalier de Trie, Master of the Lodge Freres Artistes and had three Degrees and a short life.

• SORBONNE

A college of theological professors in Paris, who exercised a great influence over religious opinion in France during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and greater part of the eighteenth centuries. The bigotry and intolerance for which they were remarkable made them the untiring persecutors of Freemasonry. In the year 1748 they published a Letter and Consultation on the Society of Freemasons, in which they declared that it was an illegal association, and that the meetings of its members should be prohibited. This was republished in 1764, at Paris, by the Freemasons, with a reply, in the form of an appendix, by De la Tierce, and again in 1766, at Berlin, with another reply by a writer under the assumed name of Jarhetti.

• SORROW LODGE

It is the custom among Freemasons on the Continent of Europe to hold special Lodges at stated periods, for the purpose of commemorating the virtues and deploring the less of their departed members, and other distinguished worthies of the Fraternity who have died. These are called Funeral or Sorrow Lodges. In Germany they are held annually; in France at longer intervals. In the United States of America the custom has been introduced by the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, whose Sorrow Lodge Ritual is peculiarly beautiful and impressive, and the usage has been adopted by many Lodges of the American Rite. On these occasions the Lodge is clothed in the habiliments of mourning and decorated with the emblems of death, solemn music is played, funeral dirges are chanted, and eulogies on the life, character, and Masonic virtues of the dead are delivered.

• SOTER

A Greek appellation implying Savior.

• SOUL OF NATURE

A platonic expression, more properly the Anima Mundi, that has been adopted into the English Royal Arch system to designate the hundred Delta, or Triangle, which Dunckerley, in his lecture, considered as the symbol of the Trinity. "So highly," says the modern lecture, "indeed did the ancients esteem the figure, that it, became among them an object of worship as the great principle of mated existence, to which they gave the name of God because it represented the animal, mineral, and vegetable creation They also distinguished it by an appellation which, in the Egyptian language, signifies the Soul of Nature." Doctor Oliver (Jurisprudence, page 446) warmly protests against the introduction of this expression as an unwarrantable innovations borrowed most probably from the Rite of the Philalethes. It has not been introduced into the American System.

• SOUTH

When the sun is at his meridian height, his invigorating rays are darted from the south. When the sun rises in the East, we are called to labor; when he sets in the West, our daily toil is over; but when he reaches the South, the hour is high twelve, and we are summoned to refreshment. In Freemasonry, the South is represented by the Junior Warden and by the Corinthian column, because it is said to be the place of beauty.

• SOUTH AUSTRALIA

A state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Friendship Lodge at Adelaide introduced Freemasonry to South Australia in 1834. The ceremony, at which the President of the Legislative Council and the Chief Justice of the Colony were initiated, was held in London. In 1844 the first Scotch Lodge was opened and eleven years later an Irish Body was chartered. Provincial Grand Lodges were formed by Scotland in 1846, England 1848, and Ireland 1860.

\In 1883 it was feared that a few of the Lodges were about to annex authority over the rest. Brother H. M. Addison thereupon called a Convention which met April 16, 1884. Twenty-eight Lodges sent delegates and the Grand Lodge of South Australia was opened in due form, with Chief Justice the Hon. S. J. Way as Grand Master. Almost all the Brethren supported the new Grand Lodge, indeed only one Lodge, the Duke of Leicester No. 363 remained wholeheartedly faithful to its early authority (see Grand Lodge).

• SOUTH CAROLINA

Solomon's Lodge was warranted in 1735 by the Grand Master of England and organized at Charleston on October 28, the following year. John Hammerton was appointed Provincial Grand Master by the Earl of Loudoun in 1736, but no further facts about the establishment of a Grand Lodge are available until there appeared a notice in the South Carolina Gazette of January 1, 1754, of the formation of a Provincial Grand Lodge on December 27, 1753. On March 30, 1754, a Deputation was signed in London and given to Chief Justice Leigh by the Marquis of Carnarvon which resulted in the reorganization of the Provincial Grand Lodge. According to Doctor Mackey this Grand Lodge became independent in 1777 and Barnard Elliott was the first Grand Master of the "Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons." The Athol or Ancient Freemasons appeared in the State as early as 1783, and in 1787 there were five Lodges of the Ancient in existence. On March 24 of that year they held a meeting and organized the "Grand Lodge of Ancient York Masons 29 In 1808 a temporary union between the two Grand Lodges took place but not until 1817 were they united under the name "Grand Lodge of Ancient Freemasons."

On February 1, 1803, the Grand Chapter of Ncw York granted a Warrant to Carolina Chapter at Charleston. The Grand Chapter for South Carolina was instituted May 29, 1812, and was represented at the Convocations of the General Grand Chapter held in 1826, 1829, 1844, and 1859. The Grand Chapter has always paid allegiance to the General Grand Chapter and has firmly resisted any suggestion that it should be independent. Nine Councils of Royal and Select Masons were established by Charters from the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, during the years 1858-9. In 1860 the Supreme Council relinquished its authority and a Grand Council was constituted on February 15. In 1880 the Degrees reverted to the Supreme Council but in 1881 the Grand Council was reorganized and duly became a constituent of the General Grand Council.

A Certificate of Membership still in existence, dated March 3, 1782, proves that South Carolina Commandery, No. 1, of Charleston was constituted at an early date. The first Warrant was destroyed by fire in 1843 and the Encampment petitioned for renewed authority. A Dispensation was therefore issued by the Grand Encampment on May 17, 1843. South Carolina, No. 1; Columbia, No. 2, and Lafayette, No. 3, formed a Grand Encampment in 1826 which was represented the same year in the General Grand Encampment. In 1830 Templarism had died down to such an extent that for over eleven years no work was done. It revived in 1841, but owing to the Civil War relapsed again until December, 1865, when Sir Albert G Mackey became eminent Commander Encampments at Columbia, Georetown and Baufort had disappeared for the time being, but after a time enthusiasm awakened and on March 25 , l 907 representatives of South Carolina, No. l; Columbia, No. 2; Spartanbury, No. 3, and Greenville, No. 4, met and instituted the Grand Commandery of South Carolina according to a Warrant issued on March 15, 1907.

In the City of Charleston Delta Lodge of Perfection, No. 1, was granted a Charter by the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, March 23, 1868; Buist Chapter of Rose Croix on May 10, 1871; Bethlehem Council of Kadosh on February 20, 1907, and Dalcho Consistory, No. l, on June 9, l911.

• SOUTH DAKOTA

When the Territory was divided in 1890 the Grand Lodge of Dakota became known as the Grand Lodge of South Dakota, and among its Lodges was the one which had been the first to be formed in Dakotan namely, Saint John's Lodge, chartered on June 3, 1863. In the same way it was decided to organize two Grand Chapters, one for North and one for South Dakota. All the Chapters treated in the latter State met on January 6, 1890, at Yankton to discuss the question, and the Grand Chapter of South Dakota was constituted in Ample Form. Representatives from Yankton, No. 1; Aberdeen, No. 14; Mitchell, No. 16; Brookings, No. 18; Orient, No. 19, and Rabboni, No. 23, were present at this meeting. On April 11, 1891, the Officers of the General Grand Council granted a Dispensation to Alpha, No. 1, at Sioux Falls, and a Charter was issued on July 21, 1891. A meeting of representatives of the chartered Councils in South Dakota was hel(l OI1 June 9, 1916, at which Companion Andrew P. Savanstrom, Past General Grand Master, presided. Officers were installed and the new Grand Council constituted. Dakota, No. 1, was the first Commandery to be established in Dakota. It may also be considered the first Commandery in South Dakota, since it was located in that District. With Cyrene, No. 2; De Molay, No. 3, and Fargo, No. 5. Dakota, No. 1, organized on May 14, 1884, the Grand Commandery of Dakota, which later changed its name to that of Grand Commandery of South Dakota. A Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, was established at Yankton by Charter dated December 22, 1888. Robert de Bruce, No. 1, a Council of Kadosh, was chartered on March 10, 1887; Mackey, No. 1, a Chapter of Rose Croix, on February 27, 1882, and Alpha, No. 1, a Lodge of Perfection, on February 8, 1882.

• SOVEREIGN

An epithet applied to certain Degrees which were invested with supreme power over inferior ones; as, Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix, which is the highest Degree of the French Rite and of some other Rites, and Sovereign Inspector General, which is the controlling Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Some Degrees, originally Sovereign in the Rites in which they were first established, in being transferred to other Rites, have lost their sovereign character, but still improperly retain the name. Thus the Rose Croix Degree of the Scottish Rite, which is there only the Eighteenth, and subordinate to the Thirty-third of Supreme Council, still retains everywhere, except in the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, the title of Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix. The expression Sovereign of Sovereigns was a title once used for the presiding officer of a Consistory (see Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, page 1891) and a similar title was also applied to members of Supreme Councils, Sovereigns of Masonry, in the circular letter sent out by the Supreme Council at Charleston, December 4, 1802 (reprinted fully in above History, pages 1871-5).

• SOVEREIGN COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE

The French expression is Souverain Commandeur du Temple. Styled in the more recent instructions of the Southern Supreme Council Knight Commander of the Temple. This is the Twenty-seventh Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite The presiding officer is styled Most Illustrious and Most Valiant, the Wardens are called Most Sovereign Commanders, and the Knights Sovereign Commanders The place of meeting is called a Court. The apron is flesh-colored, lined and edged with black, with a Teutonic cross encircled by a wreath of laurel and a key beneath, all inseriloell in black upon the Hap The scarf is red bordered with black, hanging from the right shoulder to the left hip, and suspending a Teutonic cross in enameled gold. The jewel is a triangle of gold, on which is engraved the Ineffable Name in Hebrew. It is suspended from a white collar bound with red and embroidered with four Teutonic crosses.

Vassal, Ragon, and Clavel are mistaken in connecting this Degree with the Knights Templar, with which Order its own ritual declares that it is not to be confounded. It is without a lecture. Vassal expresses the following opinion of this Degree: "The twenty-seventh degree does not deserve to be classed in the Scottish Rite as a degree, since it contains neither symbols nor allegories that connect it with initiation. It deserves still less to be ranked among the philosophic degrees. I imagine that it has been intercalated only to supply an hiatus, and as a memorial of an Order once justly celebrated." It is also the Forty-fourth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim.

• SOVEREIGN GRAND INSPECTOR- GENERAL

The Thirty-third and Last Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The Latin Constitutions of 1786 call it Tertius et trigesimus et sublimissimus gradus, that is, the Thirty-third and Most Sublime Degree; and it is staled the Protector and Conservator of the Order. The same Constitutions, in Articles I and II, say:

The Thirty-third degree confers on those Freemasons who are legitimately invested with it, the quality, title, privilege, and authority of Sovereign, Supremorum, Grand Inspectors-General of the Order. The peculiar duty of their mission is to teach and enlighten the Brethren; to preserve charity, union, and fraternal love among them; to maintain regularity in the works of each Degree and to take care that it is preserved by others, to cause the dogmas, doctrines, institutes, constitutions statutes and regulations of the Order to be reverently regarded, and to preserve and defend them on every occasion; and, finally, everywhere to occupy themselves in works of peace and mercy. The Body in which the members of this Degree assemble is called a Supreme Council. The symbolic color of the Degree is white, denoting purity. The distinctive insignia are a sash, collar, jewel, Teutonic cross, decoration, and ring.

The sash is a broad, white watered ribbon, bordered with gold, bearing on the front a triangle of gold glittering with rays of gold, which has in the center the numerals 33, with a Sword of silver, directed from above, on each side of the triangles pointing to its center. The sash, worn from the right shoulder to the left hip, ends in a point, and is fringed with gold, having at the junction a circular band of scarlet and green containing the jewel of the Order. The collar is of white watered ribbon fringed with gold, having the rayed triangle at its point and the swords at the sides. By a regulation of the Southern Supreme Council of the United States, the collar has been worn by the active, and the sash by the honorary, members of the Council. The emblem is a black double-headed eagle, with golden beaks and talons, holding in the latter a sword of gold, and crowned with the golden crown of Prussia.

The red Teutonic cross is affixed to the left side of the breast. The decoration rests upon a Teutonic cross. It is a nine-pointed star, namely, one formed by three triangles of gold one upon the other, and interlaced from the lower part of the left side to the upper part of the right a sword extends, and in the opposite direction is a hand of, as it is called, Justice. In the center is the shield of the Order, azure (blue), charged with an eagle like that on the banner, having on the dexter (right) side a Balance or (gold), and on the sinister (left) side a Compass of the second, united with a Square of the second. Around the whole shield runs a band of the first, with the Latin inscription, of the second, Ordo ab Chao, meaning Order out of Disorder, which band is enclosed by two circles, formed by two Serpents of the second, each biting his own tail. Of the smaller triangles that are formed by the intersection of the greater ones, those nine that are nearest the band are of crimson color, and each of them has one of the letters that compose the Word S. A. P. I. E. N. T. I. A., or Wisdom.

The ring is a triple one, like three small rings, each one-eighth of an inch wide, side by side, and having on the inside a delta surrounding the figures 33, and inscribed with the wearer's name, the letters S.G.I.G., and the motto of the Order, Deus meumque Jus, meaning God and my right. It has been worn on the fourth finger of the right hand but in 1923 provision was made that the Thirty-third Degree ring should be worn on the little finger of the left hand in ache Southern Jurisdiction. The ring is worn on the third finger of the left hand in the Northern Jurisdiction of the United States of America (see Ring). Until the year 1801, the Thirty-third Degree was unknown. Until then the highest Degree of the Rite, introduced into America by Stephen Morin, was the Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, or the Twenty-fifth of the Rite established by the Emperors of the East and West. The administrative heads of the Order were styled Grand Inspectors-General and Deputy Inspectors-General; but these were titles of official rank and not of Degree. Even as late as May 24, 1801, John Mitchell signs himself as Kadosh, Prince of the Royal Secret and Deputy Inspector General.

The document thus signed is a Patent which certifies that Frederick Dalcho is a Kadosh, and Prince of the Royal Secret, and which creates him a Deputy Inspector-General. But on May 31, 1801, the Supreme Council was created at Charleston, and from that time we hear of a Rite of thirty-three Degrees, eight having been added to the twenty-five introduced by Morin, and the last being called Sovereign Grand Inspector General.

The Degree being thus legitimately established by a Body which, in creating a Rite, possessed the prerogative of establishing its classes, its Degrees and its nomenclature revere accepted unhesitatingly by all subsequently created Supreme Councils; and it continues to be the administrative head of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SPECULATIVE MASONRY, EARLY

The Masonic Fraternity writes its own history as it goes along in the form of Minutes and Proceedings. Unfortunately, it is not an easy history to read, nor convenient, nor is it furnished with an index, but it is a better and more reliable chronicle of the Craft than any work written by the historians. Below is a summary drawn from some 200 Minute Books and Lodge Histories of the oldest Lodges in Britain, Canada, and the United States; of these, about 60 are of the very earliest Speculative Lodges, of which one-half or so are long since defunct, or else have been merged with other Lodges.

The items are chosen to illustrate some point important to the history of the Fraternity; and to save space, names, numbers, and dates are omitted; also, the data are representative, not exhaustive; scarcely any two of the earliest Lodges were alike in the details of Lodge practice, and the same Lodge made changes in itself from time to time. The summary is not so much a portrait of early Speculative Freemasonry as a photo montage:

The majority of Lodges were very small; one of Sixty members was excessively large, almost too large to be managed; the majority had some fifteen or twenty members. Meetings with only six or seven members present were common. During the Eighteenth Century and well into the Nineteenth they met in taverns inns hotels. Since the room was in use for other purposes, Lodge furniture was either the property of the landlord, or else had to be packed up and stored away between meetings. The arrangement was almost never satisfactory, and Lodges moved much about—one of them made twelve removals in ten years. It did the Fraternity no good to hold its meetings at the centers of hard drinking. Sometimes a " wine drawer " or waiter, or even the landlord, were 'made" expressly to enable him to enter and leave the Lodge Room while the Lodge was in session.

Lodges went by the name of the tavern in which they met—thus " the Lodge at the Goose and Gridiron, " the Lodge at " the Goat's Head, " etc. They were thus entered on the Grand Lodge's engraved lists of Lodges. They were not numbered until Dr. Thomas Dunckerley made the suggestion (he ranked with Desaguliers, Preston and Dermott as an architect of the Fraternity).

In the center of the Lodge Room was placed a table, usually of the board and trestle type. The Lodge was opened with the members at table; Lodge business was conducted there; initiations were "made"; the Brethren ate and drank together for hours on end, the feasting being not an adjunct to Lodge business but as an integral part of it.

A Lodge "feast" was therefore a Lodge meeting, and when the old Lodges insisted that Grand Lodge "Quarterly Feasts " be restored, it was in reality a demand that full Grand Lodge meetings be held, "as according to the old customs. " The meals in the richer Lodges sometimes were elaborate and costly, with a dozen liquors, and a long list of " healths. " In one instance the Secretary of a rich Lodge set down one "feast," for 51 members, at a sum now worth about 8500. Many Lodges owned their own punch bowls, plate, glasses, pitchers; a few of them had their own wine cellars.

Dues were caned "subscriptions"; most of the money went to pay for the dinners. The charity fund usually was voluntary, a Charity Box being kept at hand. Fines were imposed right and left, for non-attendance, for "being disguised in liquor, " for quarreling, for "profane swearing, " etc. Visitors were " fined " a dollar or two as their share of the costs of the food and drink. The title of the Master was " Right Worshipful. " He was elected for six months, and in some instances appointed his own Wardens.

Only a few Secretaries received stipends, and almost none of them had any regular system of books, so that there was frequent trouble over Lodge accounts (The Grand Lodge of Scotland expelled a Grand Secretary for that reason.) The Tiler wore a sword or a " poignard, " and received pay- he was a "servant" and seldom belonged to the same "class" as the members. He had many duties: to stand guard, to examine visitors, to deliver summons, to care for the furniture, etc.; the office was sometimes held in succession from father to son in the same family. (Montgomery, a famous Grand Tiler, became a personage almost as well known as the Grand Masters.) In at least one ease a Brother made a profession of being Lodge Secretary to a group of Lodges; Tilers often did. Minutes were bare, brief, and never of large importance in the early years. For decades they were not countersigned by the Master. The Secretary kept his records " in ye bag," and either took the bag home with him, or stowed it in the bottom of a pedestal. Spelling went by ear, and a Secretary spelled words as they chanced to sound to him at the moment; in more than one Minutes the Master's name was spelled three ways in one entry.

Thus, one encounters apprentice as prentice, interprentice, prentiss, prentayee, etc. (The language was not pronounced then as now; thus, tea was pronounced to rhyme with " tay, " as one recalls from a couplet by Bro. Alexander Pope.) Minutes were meager because Secretaries did as little work as possible; or were afraid of violating secrecy; or as a protection from prying eyes when they kept the bag at home.

Candidates, it appears, wore robes, for there is often mention of the purchase of them in Lodge inventories or minuses; sometimes "trousies," or "drawers" are mentioned. (Present day British Masons have weird notions about American customs. Even a learned Lodge of research was recently told that "in the States Candidates go naked!").

The average early British Lodge was as local as it was small. and knew little about the Fraternity at large, still less about foreign countries To many of them "America" meant the West Indies. This lack of knowledge made them an easy prey to " foreigner " impostors. A number of Minute Books record relief being given to "Turks" who turned out to be frauds, to French counts, ditto, and to men coming over as " rich Americans "—the "rich American" myth is even now still alive in some British centers; a "Turk" was almost any dark-skinned foreigner.

The great majority of members were Fellowcrafts only. In one ease a Worshipful Master was an Apprentice. The two grades often were conferred at one time, in "emergency meetings." The Master Mason grade was at first given in Masters' Lodges, and was confined, it appears, to Masters or Past Masters only (actual or virtual.)

The oldest Lodges, such as constituted the first Grand Lodge in 1717, were familiar with the rites and customs; but after Lodges of 'new men" had multiplied by the hundreds, the Masons themselves had only a rudimentary understanding of Freemasonry, and made many experiments, changes, etc., trying out first one thing and then another. (One Lodge might use a Bible on the altar, another would use the Old Charges on a pedestal.)

The Lodges of Speculatives under the Grand Lodge with their two Degrees (and later, their Third) were only one of many developments which came out of the old Operative Masonry; there was a Right Worshipful Society of Operative Masons; Masons' Companies in the cities; there were many self-constituted (St. Johns') Lodges which were regular but did not belong to a Grand Lodge; in North Ireland there were many individual Masons who sometimes called themselves " clandestines " and who had no Lodges or only loose and temporary ones; there were many " high grades, " or " side orders " (sued as the "Seoteh Masons" who appear then disappear in English Lodge Minutes), etc.; that this was confusing to Chartered Lodges is exhibited by almost every Minute Book, and it took nearly a century to clear up and crystallize and unify a single system of Regular Masonry.

If Masons quarreled outside the Lodge, if one of them accused another of some dishonest practices they often brought the quarrel into the Lodge for adjudication. (This occurrence of private non-Lodge affairs is another reason for the brevity of the Minutes.)

Lodges (except in and about London) had little consciousness of Grand Lodge. or interest in it, and the Grand Lodge itself appears to have had even less interest in the Lodges because it was almost impossible oftentimes for a Lodge to secure a reply from the Grand Secretary. After a Provincial Grand Lodge was established, a Lodge was given to thinking of it, rather than "the London Grand Lodge," as "Grand Lodge."

Also, Lodges were not encouraged to submit their grievances to Grand Lodge; still less were they encouraged ever to question any act of Grand Lodge—one Lodge was rebuked for doing so by the Grand Secretary who told them they had " insulted H. R. H. the Grand Master." The Wigan secessionist Grand Lodge was formed partly in consequence of the almost complete inactivity of both Grand Lodge and a Provincial Grand Lodge for nearly four years.

An American Mason is always very conscious of "the Fraternity"; even when he has his own Lodge in mind he refers to it as "the Fraternity"; Masons 501) years ago had only a thin awareness of "the Fraternity" and their interest was almost solely concentrated in the local Lodge. But as against the present day Mason, with his dim consciousness of his own Lodge, a Mason 200 years ago loved his Lodge next only after his home. He filled it up with gifts—silverware, glassware, pictures, furniture, paraphernalia, books, etc., until many old Lodges had scarcely a square yard of bare wall, and a very rich atmosphere of family feeling, of an intimate friendliness, and of Brethren gone but who had left many mementos in the Lodge Room.

Piecing together scattered hints it appears that a "Degree" followed in the main the same pattern as now, but with less of it enacted (wherein American Masonry still differs most from British). The Candidate was prepared; he took an OB--; a Tracing Board (or floor Cloth, or the "Lodge") contained the symbols of the Degree and these were explained.

It was only gradually that Degrees became in a strict sense "degrees," or separate ceremonies, each one complete in itself, and with its own members and officers, with the Lodge not permitted to alter the ceremonies, and with Lodges everywhere using the same ceremonies.

The earliest Speculatives spoke not of the "Degree" of Apprentice (etc.) but of the Lodge of Apprentices. To become a full-fledged member of the circle, was the principal aim of initiation; the ceremonies were a means to that end. A new movement began, and was destined to become triumphant, especially in America, when Preston and Hutchinson and a few others began to study the Ritual for its own sake.

Any Mason could belong to more than one Lodge— in one Lodge record a member is listed as belonging to thirteen. The smallness of Lodges was partly responsible. As "class Lodges" became a rule, each with a specialized membership and interests, a new incentive to plural membership came into play. But the greatest incentive was the simple one, that many Masons enjoyed Lodge life for its own sake.

The Minute Books and Lodge Histories leave the history of the Master Mason Degree as unsettled as ever, not because these contradict each other but because for nearly a century there was no uniform rule. Some of the oldest (Time Immemorial) Lodges appear to have kept firm hold on the whole of ceremony. Some had the Master's Degree separate from the other two (a Candidate was "made" a Fellowcraft) but kept it under Lodge control.

There were Masters' Lodges, with their own rooms, officers, and meeting times; to them would go members from a number of surrounding Lodges. In some Lodges it looks as if any member could become a Master Mason; in others, only Masters or Past Masters; and in the latter, some had to be actual Past Masters, some could be "virtual" Past Masters by "passing the chair." The general tendency seems to have been to look upon the Grand Master as sovereign over the Craft, with Grand Lodge in a secondary role; which was in contrast to the present American tendency (in reality the Grand Master and the Grand Lodge have equal sovereignty but in different fields).

Since a Grand Master was a Prince of the Blood, a Duke, an Earl, etc., the prerogatives which belonged to his person remained with him in the Grand East; in consequence a deal of snobbishness and exclusiveness developed among the Lodges, titles and ranks were over-valued, and this exclusiveness was (the writer so takes it) the principal reason for the division of England between two Grand Lodges; such a Mason as Peter Gilkes refused to accept Grand Honors or to attend Grand Lodge because the gentlemen there were "above his station." This was not true of the Ancient Grand Lodge, or of Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the American Colonies.

The oldest American Minute Books could almost be interchanged with the oldest British, so alike were the customs of the two until the end of the Revolution. There were, however, two fundamental differences in the Craft in general; first, Lodges of English, Scottish, Irish, and French origin worked here side by side, and this made more puzzling the questions the earliest American Masons were called upon to decide; second, the American Provincial Grand Lodges were left hanging in the air, because they could not obtain continuous cooperation or supervision from Britain, and at the same time did not possess complete sovereignty; expediency became the general rule. Also, the American Lodges could not obtain light on Masonry itself, because it had no teaching from Grand Lodge and no literature of its own.

(Note. One instance is that of Thomas Smith Webb, who had to move in the dark, and who adopted Preston with no clear knowledge of Preston's status in the Grand Lodge in England. Another is the odd fact that two of the first American Books of Constitutions begin with a paragraph explaining that the Book is designed for Operative (!) Masons; further on in the Book it transpires that the authors had taken Operative" to mean the book-keeping of the Secretary, the care of Lodge rooms funds, etc.; by "Speculative" they meant the Ritual.) The Eighteenth Century Lodges had no Order of the Eastern Star; yet the women had some connections with the Craft. In Ireland there were called "Masonic Dames." In England one Lodge purchased "gloves for the ladies." The history of Lodge symbolism is obscure; in old Tracing Boards are pictures of symbols no longer used, absence of symbols none in use, and symbols would be dropped and then resumed, etc.

The broached thurnel (a stone axe plus a certain type of stone); Common Gudge (or judge; a template); perpend ashlar; these are a few of the symbols or terms not familiar to us also on Tracing Boards were arches, the Star of David, a chisel, sometimes a pencil, etc.; the trowel v, as once widely used then widely discontinued. The Pps. of the OB. . was used at least as early as 1700, but not in its present elaborate form. The Ob.-. appears to have been shorter. The Box, for relief, was a fixture in a Lodge; but such monies were expended from it represent but a fraction of the relief given; for where Lodges were small, and relations were close, much help was given Masonically to widows and orphans which was not done by Lodge action.

Early American Lodges were those which worked between 1730 and 1780-5; and while, as stated above, they were in essential Lodges of the same sort as worked in Britain during the same period, there was as between the former and the latter one difference which though small at the time was to lead to an ever widening divergence: the British Lodge was small, its members were recruited (generally) from its immediate neighborhood, and their social evening around the table was their Lodge's greatest appeal to them;

an American Lodge was larger, had fewer sister Lodges near it, drew its members from a larger radius, its membership represented every type, and the Lodge's greatest appeal to them was as a meeting place, an opportunity to become acquainted, a social center, a place to see friends which a man could not see otherwise; there was far less emphasis on the "feast" (which usually was a lunch) and much more on the Work.

(At the present time, and not to make comparisons, the American Craft Ritual is larger, more complete, more interesting, and more artistically and self-consistently developed than its English counterpart in any one of the English Workings.) In their first impact on a Masonic student's mind the 200 or so Minute Books and Lodge Histories of which the above random notes are only slight indicia, alive him a sense of confusion, as if Speculative Masonry began with no clear understanding of itself; in the end he learns that the opposite was true.

There never has been deviation or uncertainty in the things that count. Before even the Mother Grand Lodge waw dreamed of, Freemasonry was a fraternity of workmen, was a philosophy of work (the first ever given to the world). raised work to the level of an attribute of God whose name was appropriately Sovereign Grand Architect (or Workman), envisaged mankind as a Lodge, or body of workmen, taught that work was not a curse but belongs to what a man is and therefore it cannot be despised without abasing him.

It was these discoveries truths, and principles which brought Freemasonry into being; they drove it forward, they persisted unaltered among many changes, and in the long run, by the tests they imposed, determined what belonged to Freemasonry and what did not, what rites, ceremonies, symbols, lectures, rules. regulations, and customs; whatever has opposed them has died, or hangs withering on the branch; and it is they, working through the Lodges, which have made Masonry a power among men. Deviations, details, experiments, localisms, these have been unimportant in the long run. It is Freemasonry that has created the Lodges; not the Lodges that have created it. This stands clear and evident in the Histories and Minute Books themselves.

• SPECULATIVE-2

The word Speculative is used by Freemasons in its primary sense as symbolic, or theoretical, when opposed to Operative. The Matthew Cooke Manuscript transcribed about 1400 A. D. from an earlier original, makes use of the word in this technical connection, and its adoption by Anderson in his version of the Old Charges, 1723 A.D., is one of the proofs that this Manuscript was under his hand when compiling the Book of Constitutions Otherwise he would have substituted for Speculative and Operative the Scottish terms Geomatic and Domatic, just as he used Fellow Craft and Cowan.

Dogmatic is derived from the Latin word Domus, which signifies a house. It therefore means of or belonging to a house. Its Masonic meaning is transparent from its usage in former times. When a body of Freemasons who were also Operative Masons, applied for a Charter to found a Lodge, as was the case with the petitioners for Ayr Kilwinning in 1765, they designated themselves Dogmatic Masons.

On the other hand, members of Lodges who were not Operative Masons—Nobles, Lairds, etc.—were styled Geomatic Masons, a term derived from the Greek word afa, the land or soil, and therefore intended to show that they were landed proprietors or men in some way or another connected with agriculture. This was evidently the idea the word was meant to express at first but it was by and by applied to all Freemasons who were not Operative Masons, and who were in those days styled "Gentlemen Masons."

So says Brother D. Murray Lyon, of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, in his History of Mother Kilwinning. But this will hardly hold water; it may pass with the bastard Latin Domaticus, but no one sufficiently acquainted with Greek to know that meant the Earth, could tolerate the meaningless termination. Judging by linguistic analogues, Geomatic should be a corruption of Geometic, due to the sharp sound of the short e in Lowland Scottish aided by the jingling assonance of Domatic (see Domatic).

Similarly, the word Cowan is first met with amongst Scottish Operative Masons applied with contempt to a Dry-Diker, that is, a spurious Freemason who builds walls without cement. Its etymology is uncertain and the far-fetched derivations from a dog, or from listening, a listening person, that is, an eavesdropper, must be dismissed as inconsistent with philological principles. In the present writer's opinion the most likely derivation is that which connects it with the French Cofon or Coyon, a man of no account, a wretch. If so, it adds another to the list of low French words embedded in Lowland Scottish, during the medieval intercourse of the two countries, for the curious derivation of the French word and its Romance cognates from Latin Coleus, Greek (see Cowan).

The above notes are by Brother W. J. Chetwode Craxvley (Caementaria Hibernica, Faseieulus 1, page 6).

• SPECULATIVE FREEMASONRY

The lectures of the Symbolic Degrees instruct the neophyte in the difference between the Operative and the Speculative divisions of Freemasonry. They tell him that "we work in Speculative Masonry, but our ancient Brethren wrought in both Operative and Speculative." The distinction between an Operative Art and a Speculative Science is, therefore, familiar to all Freemasons from their early instructions.

To the Freemason, this Operative Art has been symbolized in that intellectual deduction from it which has been correctly called Speculative Freemasonry. At one time each was an integral part of one undivided system. Not that the period ever existed when every Operative Mason was acquainted with, or initiated into, the Speculative Science. Even now, there are thousands of skillful artisans who know as little of that as they do of the Hebrew language which was spoken by its founder. But Operative Masonry was, in the inception of our history, and is, in some measure, even now, the skeleton upon which was strung the living muscles and tendons and nerves of the Speculative system. It was the block of marble, rude and unpolished it may have been, from which was sculptured the life-breathing statue.

Speculative Masonry, which is but another name for Freemasonry in its modern acceptation, may be briefly defined as the Scientific application and the religious consecration of the rules and principles, the language, the implements, and materials of Operative Masonry to the veneration of God, the purification of the heart, and the inculcation of the dogmas of a religious philosophy.

Speculative Masonry, or Freemasonry, is then a system of ethics, and must therefore, lice all other ethical systems, have its distractive doctrines. These may be divided into three classes, namely, the Moral, the Religious, and the Philosophical.

1. The Moral Doctrines.

These are dependent on, and spring out of, its character as a social institution. Hence among its numerous definitions is one that declares it to be "a science of morality," and morality is said to be, symbolically, one of the precious jewels of a Master Mason.

Freemasonry is, in its most patent and prominent sense, that which most readily and forcibly attracts the attention of the uninitiated; a fraternity, an association of men bound together by a peculiar tie; and therefore it is essential, to its successful existence, that it should, as it does, inculcate, at the very threshold of its teachings, obligation of kindness, man's duty to his neighbor.

"There are three great duties," says the Charge given to an Entered Apprentice, "which, as a Mason, you are charged to inculcate—to God, your neighbor, and yourself." And the duty to our neighbor is said to be that we should act upon the square, and do unto him as we wish that he should do unto ourselves.

The object, then, of Freemasonry, in this moral point of view, is to carry out to their fullest practical extent those lessons of mutual love and mutual aid that are essential to the very idea of a brotherhood. There i8 a socialism in Freemasonry from which spring all Masonic virtues—not that modern project exhibited in a community of goods, which, although it may have been practiced by the primitive Christians, is found to be uncongenial with the independent spirit of the present age but a community of sentiment, of principle, of design, which gives to Freemasonry all its social, and hence its moral, character.

As the old song tells us:

That virtue had not left mankind

lier social maxims prove

For stamp'd upon the Mason's mind

Are unity and love.

Thus the moral design of Freemasonry, based upon its social character, is to make men better to each other; to cultivate brotherly love, and to inculcate the practice of all those virtues which are essential to the perpetuation of a brotherhood. A Freemason is bound, say the Old Charges, to obey the moral law, and of this law the very keystone is the divine precept—the Golden Rule of our Lord—to do unto others as we would that they should do unto us. 'I`o relieve the distressed, to give good counsel to the erring, to speak well of the absent, to observe temperance in the indulgence of appetite, to bear evil with fortitude, to be prudent in life and conversation, and to dispense justice to all men, are duties that are inculcated on every Freemason by the moral doctrines of his Order.

These doctrines of morality are not of recent origin. They are taught in all the Ok. Constitutions of the Craft, as the parchment records of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries show, even when the Institution was Operative in its organization, and long before the speculative element was made its predominating characteristic. Thus these Old Charges tell us, almost all of them in the same words, that Freemasons "shall be true, each one to other, that is to say, to every Mason of the science of Masonry that are Masons allowed, ye shall doe to them as ye would that they should doe unto youth.

2. The Religious Doctrines

of Freemasonry are very simple and self-evident. They are darkened by no perplexities of sectarian theology, but stand out in the broad light, intelligible and acceptable by all minds, for they ask only for a belief in God and in the immortality of the soul. He who denies these tenets can be no Freemason, for the religious doctrines of the Institution significantly impress them in every part of its instructions. The neophyte no sooner crosses the threshold of the Lodge, but he is called upon to recognize, as his first duty, an entire trust in the superintending care and love of the Supreme Being, and the series of initiations into Symbolic Freemasonry terminate by revealing the awful symbol of a life after death and an entrance upon immortality. Now this and the former class of doctrines are intimately connected and mutually dependent. For we must first know and feel the universal fatherhood of God before we can rightly appreciate the universal brotherhood of man. Hence the Old Records already alluded to, which show us what was the condition of the Craft in the Middle Ages, exhibit an eminently religious spirit. These ancient Constitutions always begin with a pious invocation to the trinity, and sometimes to the saints, and they tell us that "the first Charge is that a Mason shall be true to God and holy Church, and use no error nor heresy." And the Charges published in 1723, which professes to be a compilation made from those older records, prescribe that a Freemason, while left to his particular opinions, must be of that "religion in which all men agree," that is to say, the religion which teaches the existence of God and an eternal life. 3. The Philosophical Doctrines of Freemasonry are scarcely less important, although they arc less generally understood than either of the preceding classes. The object of these philosophical doctrines is very different from that of either the moral or the religious. For the moral and religious doctrines of the Order are intended to make men virtuous, while its philosophical doctrines are designed to make them zealous Freemasons. He who knows nothing of the philosophy of Freemasonry will be apt to become in time lukewarm and indifferent but he who devotes himself to its contemplation will feel an ever-increasing ardor in the study.

Now these philosophical doctrines are developed in that symbolism which is the especial characteristic of Masonic teaching, and relate altogether to the lost and recovered word, the search after divine truth, the manner and time of its discovery, and the reward that awaits the faithful and successful searcher. Such a philosophy far surpasses the abstract quiddities of metaphysicians. It brings us into close relation to the profound thought of the ancient world, and makes us familiar with every subject of mental science that lies within the grasp of the human intellect. So that, in conclusion, we find that the moral, religious, and philosophical doctrines of Freemasonry respectively relate to the social, the eternal, and the intellectual progress of man.

Finally, it must be observed that while the old Operative Institution, which was the cradle and forerunner of the Speculative, as we now have it, taught abundantly in its Constitutions the moral and religious doctrines of which we have been treating, it makes no reference to the philosophical doctrines. That our Operative predecessors were well acquainted with the science of symbolism is evident from the architectural ornaments of the buildings which they erected; but they do not seem to have applied its principles to any great extent to the elucidation of their moral and religious teachings; at least, we final nothing said of this symbolic philosophy in the Old Records that are extant.

And whether the Operative Masons were reticent on this Subject from choice or from ignorance, we may lay it down as an axiom, not easily to be controverted, that the philosophic doctrines of the Order are altogether a development of the system for which we are indebted solely to Speculative Freemasonry.

• SOVEREIGN MASTER

This title has two references.

1. The presiding officer in a Council of Companions of the Red Cross. He represents Darius, King of Persia.

2. The Sixtieth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim.

• SOVEREIGN OF MASONRY

See Sovereign

• SOVEREIGN OF SOVEREIGNS

See Sovereign

• SOVEREIGN PRINCE MASON

A title first conferred on its members by the Council of Emperors of the East and West.

• SOVEREIGN PRINCE OF ROSE CROIX

See Rose Croix

• SPAIN

Anderson says (see Constitutions, second edition, page 194) that a Deputation was granted by Lord Coleraine, Grand Master, in 1728, for constituting a Lodge at Madrid; another in 1731, by Lord Lovell, to Capt. James Cummerford, to be Provincial Grand Master of Andalusia; and a third in 1732, by Lord Montagu, for establishing a Lodge at Valenciennes. George Smith, writing in 1783, says (Use and Abuse of Freemasonry, page 203): "The first, and, I believe, the only Lodge established in Spain was by a Deputation sent to Madrid to constitute a Lodge in that city, under the auspices of Lord Coleraine, 1727; which continued under English jurisdiction till the year 1776, when it refused that subordination, but still continues to meet under its own authority." From these two differing authorities we derive only this fact, in which they concur: that Freemasonry was introduced into Spain in 1727, more probably 1728, by the Grand Lodge of England. Smith's statement that there never was a second Lodge at Madrid is opposed by that of Gadieke, who says that in 1751 there were two Lodges in Madrid.

What was probably the first active Masonic Lodge in Spain was held at a French Hotel in Madrid on February 15, 1728, and was summoned by Philip, Duke of Wharton. This was also the first Lodge to be warranted abroad by the Grand Lodge of England. Saint John of Jerusalem Lodge, Number 51, was chartered at Gibraltar on March 9, 1729, and two years later Capt. James Cummerford was appointed Provincial Grand Master for Andalusia.

Llorente says ( History of the Inquisition, page 525) that in 1741 Philip V issued a Royal Ordinance against the Freemasons, and, in consequence, many were arrested and sent to the galleys. The members of the Lodge at Madrid were especially treated by the Inquisition with great severity. All the members were arrested, and eight of them sent to the galleys. In 1751, Ferdinand VI, instigated by the Inquisitor Joseph Torrubia, published a Decree forbidding the assemblies of Freemasons, and declaring that all violators of it should be treated as persons guilty of high treason. In that year, Pope Benedict XIV had renewed the Bull of Clement XII. In 1793, the Cardinal Vicar caused a Decree of death to be promulgated against all Freemasons. Notwithstanding these persecutions of the Church and the State, Freemasonry continued to be cultivated in Spain; but the meetings of the Lodges were held with great caution and secrecy.

From 1728 onwards although Freemasonry suffered much persecution it grew strong amid dangers and in 1809 a Grand Orient of Spain was actually founded at Madrid in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Not until the Revolution of 1868 could Freemasonry be practiced openly in the country. But the York Rite, which had been formerly practiced, appears now to have been abandoned, and the National Grand Lodge just alluded to was constituted by three Lodges of the Scottish Rite which, during that year, had been established at Madrid. From that time the Freemasonry of Spain has been that of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Clavel says (Picturesque History, page 252) that In 1810, the Marquis de Clermont-Tonnere, member of the Supreme Council of France, created" near the National Grand Lodge, of the Scottish Rite m Spain, a Grand Consistory of the Thirty-second Degree; and, in 181l, the Count de Grasse added to this a Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree, which immediately organized the National Grand Lodge under the title of Grand Orient of Spain and the Indies. The overthrow of French domination dispersed, in 1813, most of the Spanish Freemasons, and caused the suspension of Masonic work in that country Ferdinand VII having succeeded to the throne, 1814, restored the Inquisition with all its oppressive prerogatives, proscribed Freemasonry, and forbade the meetings of the Lodges. It was not until 1820 that the Grand Orient of Spain recovered its activity, and in 1821 we find a Supreme Council in actual existence, the history of whose organization was thus given, in 1870, to Brother A. G. Goodall, the Representative of the Supreme Council of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States:

The parties now claiming to be a Supreme Council assert that the Count de Tilly, by authority from his cousin, De Grasse Tilly, constituted a Supreme Council, Ancient Accepted Rite, at Seville, in 1807; but in consequence of a revolution, in which Tilly was a prominent actor, the Grand Body was removed to Aranjuez where on the 21st of September, 1808, the officers were duly installed; Saavedra as Sovereign Grand Commander, Ad Vitam, or for life; Count de Tilly, Lieutenant Grand Commander, Carlos de Rosas, Grand Treasurer, Jovellanos. Grand Chanchellor; Quintana, Grand Secretary Pelajos, Captain of Guard. On the death of civilly anti Saavedra, Badilla became Sovereign Grand Commander and under his administration the Supreme Council was united with the Grand Orient of Spain at Granada in 1817, under the title of Supreme Council, National Grand Orient of Spain.

On the death of Ferdinand VII in 1853, the persecutions against the Freemasons ceased, because, in the civil war that ensued, the priests lost much of their power. between 1845 and 1849, according to Findel ( History, page 584), several Lodges were founded and a Grand Orient established, which appears to have exercised powers up to at least 1848. But subsequently, during the reign of Queen Isabella Freemasonry again fell into decadence. It has however, revived, and many Lodges continued in existence who formerly were under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Portugal.

Nowadays there are several independent Masonic Bodies in Spain and it is almost impossible to trace their history and their present status. However, the Annuaire reports the Grand Lodge of Spain, formerly Catalonia-Baleares, to have been founded in 1885, and that the Grand Orient of Spain at Madrid had decided at an Assembly held on October 21-4, 1922, to dissolve and form the following Bodies: Grand Lodge of Northeastern Spain (comprising Catalonia, Navarre, Baleares, and Aragon), Grand Lodge of the Levant (Valenee, Mureia, Cuenea, and Ferrol), Grand Lodge of North western Spain (Galieia, Asturias, Leon), Grand Lodge of Middle Spain (Andalusia, Canaries, Northern Africa), Grand Lodge of Central Spain (Castille, Estremadure, Vaseongadas), Grand Lodge of Porto Rico, and the Grand Lodge of the Philippines. The last two projects must not be confused with the properly authorized Bodies already at work in these islands. But the Grand Orient of Spain has not respected jurisdictional boundaries and even before the above ambitious undertaking, had attempted a Regional Grand Lodge of North America, which was promptly denounced and vigorously condemned by the regular Grand Lodges of the United States.

• SPARTACUS

The characteristic name assumed by Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Order of the Illuminati.

• SPEAKERS BUREAU

The Educational Committees of American Grand Lodges which maintain Speakers Bureaus for convenience of their Lodges employ such methods as their needs require or their circumstances allow, methods thereby differing from one Grand Jurisdiction to another. The most comprehensive system, and the one in which almost every possible method has a place at one point or another, is the one employed by the Board of General Activities, an educational department of the Grand Lodge of New York, which occupies a floor of Masonic Hall in New York City, and is administered by a salaried staff. In 1920 the then Grand Lodge Committee on Educational Service, R. W. Sidney Morse being Executive Secretary, established the first Speakers Bureau.

When this and four other Committees were consolidated in 1926 to become the Board of General Activities (not to be confused in its functions with the Board of General Purposes of the United Grand Lodge of England) the Speakers Bureau was enlarged and placed in care of a full-time, salaried member of the Department. Volunteer speakers were called for from each of the fifty-nine Districts. They furnished data about themselves.

These reports were in each District reviewed by the District Deputy Grand Master and the Masters. The Board made a final selection, averaging three per District. The name, address, occupation, Lodge, and favorite speech subjects., etc., were entered in a file. When a Lodge asked for a speaker the Board sent it data on three speakers at convenient distances from it. The Lodge made its choice, and itself made the arrangements with the chosen speaker in person. Afterwards the Lodge made a report to the Board of General Activities; and if from these reports it was learned that some given speaker was a failure, or personally unsuitable, etc., his name was removed from the list.

• SPENCER MANUSCRIPT

A manuscript copy of the Old Charges of the date of 1726, which belonged to the late Brother Richard Spencer and was sold in 1875 to Enoch T. Carson, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and with his library, after Brother Carson's death, became the property of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts through the generosity of General Lawrence. It was reproduced in Spencer's Old Constitutions in 1871.

• SPES MEA IN DEO EST

A Latin motto meaning: My hope is in God. The motto of the Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• SPETH, GEORGE WILLIAM

English Freemason, a founder of Quatuor Coronati Lodge and the first Secretary. He originated the Correspondence Circle of that Lodge. This eminent Brother was born in 1847, was initiated in the Lodge of Unity No. 183 of London in 1872, becoming Worshipful Master in 1876. He wrote several papers and works on the Fraternity, History of his Mother Lodge appearing in 1881 and a work on Royal Freemasons being published in 1885. He was also the author of many articles appearing in Masonic journals such as Ars Quatuor Coronatoram. For sixteen years he held the office of Secretary to the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, his service only terminating with his death on April 19, 1901.

• SPIRE, CONGRESS OF

Spire is a city in Bavaria, on the banks of the Rhine, and the seat of a Cathedral which was erected in the eleventh century A Masonic Congress was convoked there in 1469 by the Grand Lodge of Strasburg, principally to take into consideration the condition of the Fraternity and of the edifices in the course of construction by them, as well as to discuss the rights of the Craft.

• SPIRITUALIZING

In the early lectures of the eighteenth century, this word was used to express the method of Symbolic instruction applied to the impalements of Operative Masonry. In a ritual of 1725, it is said: "As we are not all working Masons, we apply he working-tools to our morals, which we call spiritualizing ." Thus, too, about the same time, Bunyan wrote his symbolic book which he called Solomon's Temple Spiritualized. Phillips, in his New World of Words, 1706, thus defines to spiritualize: "to explain a passage of an author in a spiritual manner, to give it a godly or mystical sense."

• SPIRITUAL LODGE

Hutchinson (Spirit of Masonry page 94) says: "We place the spiritual Lodge ,in the vale of Jehosophat, implying thereby, that le principles of Masonry are derived from the knowledge of God, and are established in the Judgment of the Lord; the literal translation of the word Jehosophat, from the Hebrew tongue, being no other than those express words." This refers to the Lodge, which is thus described in the old lectures at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which were in vogue at the time of Hutchinson.

Where does the Lodge stand?

Upon the Holy Ground, on the highest hill or lowest vale. or in the vale of Jehoshaphat, or any other sacred place.

The Spiritual Lodge is the imaginary or Symbolic Lodge, whose form, magnitude, covering, supports, and other attributes are described in the lectures.

• SPIRITUAL TEMPLE

The French Freemasons say: "We erect temples for virtue and dungeons for vice"; thus referring to the great Masonic doctrine of a spiritual temple. There is no symbolism of the Order more sublime than that in which the Speculative Freemason is supposed to be engaged in the construction of a spiritual temple, in allusion to that material one which was erected by his operative predecessors at Jerusalem. Indeed, the difference, in this point of view, between Operative and Speculative Freemasonry is simply this: that while the former was engaged in the construction, on Mount Moriah, of a material temple of stones and cedar, and gold and precious stones, the latter is occupied, from his first to his last initiation, in the construction, the I adornment, and the completion of the spiritual temple of his body.

The idea of making the temple a symbol of the body is not, it is true, exclusively Masonic. It had occurred to the first teachers of Christianity. Christ himself alluded to it when he said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up"; and Saint Paul extends the idea, in the first of his Epistles to the Corinthians (iii, 16), in the following language: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" And again, in a subsequent passage of the same Epistle (vi, 19) he reiterates the idea in a more positive form: "What, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"

But the mode of treating this symbolism by a reference to the particular Temple of Solomon, and to the operative art engaged in its construetion, is an application of the idea peculiar to Freemasonry. Hitchcock, in his Essay on Swedenborg, thinks that the same Idea was also shared by the Hermetic Philosophers He says: "With perhaps the majority of readers, the temple of Solomon, and also the tabernacle, were mere buildings—very magnificent, indeed, but still mere buildings—for the worship of God.

But some are struck with many portions of the account of their erection admitting a moral interpretation; and while the buildings are allowed to stand, or to have stood, once, visible objects, these interpreters are delighted to meet with indications that Moses and Solomon, in building the Temples, were wise in the knowledge of God and of man; from which point it is not difficult to pass on to the moral meaning altogether, and affirm that the building, which was erected without the noise of a 'hammer, nor ax, nor any tool of iron' (First Kings vi, 7), was altogether a moral building—a building of God, not made with hands. In short, many see in the story of Solomon's Temple, a symbolical representation of Man as the temple of God, with its Holy of Holies deep seated in the center of the human heart."

• SPOULEE, JOHN DE

He is claimed to have presided over the Freemasons of England in 1350, in the reign of Edward III. Doctor Anderson says he was called Master of the Ghiblim (see Constitutions, 1738, page 70).

• SPRATT, EDWARD

Editor of an Irish edition of Anderson's Constitutions of 1738, published at Dublin, 1751. He was Grand Secretary to the Grand Lodge of Ireland.

• SPREADING THE BALLOT

Taking the vote on the application of a candidate for initiation or admission. It is an Americanism, principally developed in the Western States. Thus: "The ballot may be spread a second time in almost any case if the harmony of the Lodge seems to require it."—Grand Master Swigert of Kentucky. "It is legal to spread the ballot the third time, if for the correction of mistakes, not otherwise." — Rob Morris. It is a technicality.

• SPRENGSEISEN, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH KESSLER VON

An ardent adherent of Von Hund and admirer of his Templar system, in defense of which, and against the Spiritual Templarism of Starck, he wrote, in 1786, the book, now very rare, entitled Anti Saint Nicaise, and other works. He was born at Saalsfield, in 1731, and died January 11, 1809 (see Saint Nicaise).

• SPRIG OF ACACIA

See Acacia

• SPURIOUS FREEMASONRY

For this term, and for the theory connected with it, we are indebted to Doctor Oliver, whose speculations led him to the conclusion that in the earliest ages of the world there were two systems of Freemasonry, the one of which, preserved by the patriarchs and their descendants, he called Primitive or Pure freemasonry (see Primitive Freemasonry).

The other, which was a schism from this system, he designated as the Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity. To comprehend this system of Oliver, and to understand his doctrine of the declension of the Spurious from the Primitive Freemasonry, we must remember that there were two races of men descended from the loins of Adam, whose history is as different as their characters were dissimilar. There was the virtuous race of Seth and his descendants, and the wicked one of Cain. Seth and his children, down to Noah, preserved the dogmas and instructions, the legends and symbols, which had been received from their common progenitor, Adam; but Cain and his descendants whose vices at length brought on the destruction of the earth, either totally forgot or greatly corrupted them.

Their Freemasonry was not the same as that of the Sethites. They distorted the truth, and varied the landmarks to suit their own profane purposes. At length the two races became blended together. The descendants of Seth, becoming corrupted by their frequent communications with those of Cain, adopted their manners, and soon lost the principles of the Primitive Freemasonry, which at length were confined to Noah and his three sons, who alone, in the destruction of a wicked world, were thought worthy of receiving mercy.

Noah consequently preserved this system, and was the medium of communicating it to the post-diluvian world. Hence, immediately after the Deluge, Primitive Freemasonry was the only system extant. But this happy state of affairs was not to last. Ham, the son of Noah, who had been accursed by his father for his wickedness, had been long familiar with the corruptions of the system of Cain, and with the gradual deviations from truth which, through the influence or evil example, had crept into the system of Seth. After the Deluge, he propagated the worst features of both systems among his immediate descendants.

Two sets or parties, so to Speak, now arose in the world— one which preserved the great truths of religion, and consequently of Freemasonry, which had been handed down from Adam, Enoch, and Noah—and another which deviated more and more from this pure, original Source. On the dispersion at the Tower of Babel, the schism became still wider and more irreconcilable. The legends of Primitive Freemasonry were altered, and its symbols perverted to a false worship; the mysteries were dedicated to the worship of false gods arid the practice of idolatrous rites, and in the place of the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry which continued to be cultivated among the patriarchal descendants of Noah, was established those Mysteries of Paganism to which Doctor Oliver has given the name of the Spurious Freemasonry.

It is not to Doctor Oliver, nor to any very modern writer, that we are indebted for the idea of a Masonic schism in this early age of the world. The doctrine that Freemasonry was lost, that is to say, lost in its purity, to the larger portion of mankind, at the Tower of Babel, is still preserved in the ritual of Ancient Craft Masonry.

And in the Degree of Noachites, a Degree which is attached to the Scottish Rite, the fact is plainly adverted to as, indeed, the very foundation of the Degree. Two races of Freemasons are there distinctly named, the Noachites and the Hiramites; the former were the Conservators of the Primitive Freemasonry as the descendants of Noah; the latter were the descendants of Hiram, who was himself of the race which had fallen into Spurious Freemasonry, but had reunited himself to the true sect at t he building of King Solomon's Temple, as we shall hereafter see. But the inventors of the Degree do not seem to have had any very precise notions in relation to this latter part of the history. The Mysteries, which constituted what has been thus called Spurious Freemasonry, were all more or less identical in character.

Varying in a few unimportant particulars, attributable to the influence of local causes, their great similarity in all important points showed their derivation from a common origin. In the first place, they were communicated through a system of initiation, by which the aspirant was gradually prepared for the reception of their final doctrines; the rites were performed at night, and in the most retired situations, in caverns or amid the deep recesses of groves and forests; and the secrets were only communicated to the initiated after the administration of an obligation.

Thus, Firmicus, a Latin author in the reign of Constantine who about the year 346 A.D. wrote of false objects of worship in De erroributs profanarum religionum (book vii), tells us that "when Orpheus explained the ceremonies of his mysteries to candidates, he demanded of them, at the very entrance, an oath, under the solemn sanction of religion, that they would not betray the rites to profane ears." Hence, as Warburton says from Horus Apollo, the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the mysteries was a grasshopper, because that insect was supposed to have no mouth.

The ceremonies were all of a funereal characters Commencing in representations of a lugubrious description, they celebrated the legend of the death and burial of some mythical being who was the especial object of their love and adoration. But these rites thus beginning in lamentation, and typical of death, always ended in joy. The object of their sorrow was restored to life and immortality, and the latter part of the ceremonial was descriptive of his resurrection. Hence, the great doctrines of the mysteries were the immortality of the soul and the existence of a God.

Such, then, is the theory on the subject of what is called Spurious Freemasonry, as taught by Doctor Oliver and the disciples of his school. Primitive Freemasonry consisted of that traditional knowledge and symbolic instruction which had been handed down from Adam, through Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the patriarchs, to the time of Solomon. Spurious Freemasonry consisted of the doctrines and initiations practiced at first by the antediluvian descendants of Cain, and, after the dispersion at Babel, by the Pagan priests and philosophers in their Mysteries (see Clandestine).

• SPURS

In the Orders of Chivalry, the slurs had a Symbolic meaning as important as their practical use was necessary. "To win one's spurs" was a phrase which meant "to win one's right to the dignity of knighthood." Hence, in the investiture of a knight, he was told that the spurs were a symbol of promptitucle in military Service; and in the degradation of an unfaithful knight, his spurs were hacked off by the book, to show his utter unworthiness to wear them. Stowe says (Annals, 902), in describing the ceremony of investing knights: "Evening prayer being ended, there stood at the chapel-door the king's master-cook, with his white apron and sleeves, and chopping-knife in his hand, gilded about the edge, and challenged their spurs. which they redeemed with a noble a piece, and he said to every knight, as they pressed by him: fair Knight, look that you be true and loyal to the King, my master, or else I must hew these spurs from your heels.' " In the Masonic Orders of Chivalry, the symbolism of the spurs has unfortunately been omitted.

• SQUARE

This is one of the most important and significant Symbols in Freemasonry. As such, it is proper that its true form should be preserved. French Freemasons have almost universally given it with one leg longer than the other, thus making it a carpenter's square American Freemasons, following the incorrect delineations of Brother Jeremy L. Cross, have, while generally preserving the equality of length in the legs, unnecessarily marked its surface with inches; thus making it an instrument for measuring length and breadth which it is not. It is simply the trying square of a stone-mason, and has a plain surface; the sides or legs embracing an angle of ninety degrees, and is intended only to test the accuracy of the sides of a stone, and to see that its edges subtend the same angle.

In Freemasonry, the square is a symbol of morality. This is its general signification, and is applied in various ways:

1. It presents itself to the neophyte as one of the Three Great Lights.

2. To the Fellow Craft as one of his Working-tools.

3. To the Master Mason as the official emblem of the Master of the Lodge.

Everywhere, however, it inculcates the same lesson of morality, of truthfulness, of honesty. So universally accepted is this symbolism, that it has gone outside of the Order, and has been found in colloquial language communicating the same idea. Square, says Halliwell, Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, means honest, equitable, as in "square dealing." To play upon the square is proverbial for to play honestly. In this sense the word is found in the old writers.

As a Masonic symbol, it is of very ancient date, and was familiar to the Operative Masons. In the year 1830, the architect, in rebuilding a very ancient bridge called Baal Bridge, near Limerick, in Ireland, found under the foundation-stone an old brass square, much eaten away, containing on its two surfaces the following inscription, the U being read as V: I. WILL. STRIUE. TO. LIUE.—WITH. LOUE. & CARE.— UPON. THE. LEUL.—BY. THE. SQUARE., and the date 1517. The modern Speculative Freemason will recognize the idea of living on the level fled by the square This discovery proves, if proof were necessary, that the familiar idea was borrowed from our Operative Brethren of former days. The square, as a symbol in Speculative Freemasonry, has therefore presented itself from the very beginning of the revival period. In the very earliest catechism of the eighteenth century, of the date of 1725, we find the answer to the question, "How many make a Lodge?" is "God and the Square, with five or seven right or perfect Masons." God and the Square, religion and morality, must be present in every Lodge as governing principles.

Signs at that early period were to be made by squares and the Furniture of the Lodge was declared to be the Bible, Compasses, and Square. In the public lecture of Brother Herbert A. Giles, Worshipful Master of Ionic Lodge, No. 1781 at Amoy, delivered in 1880 and entitled Freemasonry in China, says:

From time immemorial we find the Square and Compasses used by Chinese Writers to symbolize precisely the same phases of moral conduct as in our system of Freemasonry. The earliest passage known to one which bears upon the subject is to be found in the Book of history embracing the period reaching from the twenty-fourth to the seventh century before Christ.

There in an account of a military expedition we read: "Ye officers of government, apply the Colllpasses!"

In another part of the same venerable record a Magistrate is spoken of as: " A man of the level, or the level man"

The public discourses of Confucius provide us with several Masonic allusions of a more or less definite character. For instance. when recounting his own degrees of moral progress in life, the Master tells us that only at seventy-five spears of age could he venture to follow the inclinations of his heart without fear of " transgressing the limits of the Square." this would be 481 B.C. belt it is in the works of his great follower, Mencius, who flourished nearly two hundred years later, that we meet with a fuller and more impressive Masonic phraseology. In one chapter we are taught that just as the most skilled artificers are unable, without the aid of the Square and Compasses to produce perfect rectangles or perfect circles, so must all men apply these tools figuratively to their lives, and the level and the marking-line besides, if they would walk in the straight and even paths of wisdom and keep themselves within the bonds of honor and virtue. In Book iv we read:

"The Compasses and Square are the embodiment of the rectangular and the round, just as the prophets of old were the embodiment of the due relationship between man and man"

In Book vi we find these words:

The Master Mason, in teaching his apprentices makes use of the Compasses and the Square Ye who are engaged in the pursuit of wisdom must also make use of the Compasses and the Square. In the Great Learning, admitted on all sides to date from between 300 to 400 years before Christ, in Chapter 10, we read that a man should abstain from doing unto others what he would not they should do unto him, ' this," adds the writer, is called the principle of acting on the Square." In all rites and in all languages where Freemasonry has penetrated, the square has preserved its primitive Signification as a symbol of morality.

• SQUARE, THE

The article on page 963 shows that in Freemasonry (and Masons can have only a secondary interest in the symbol as used outside the Craft) the Square has more than one use or exposition: it can even be said that instead of taking it as one symbol with many meanings it is more correct to take it that m Ancient Craft Masonry there are a number of Squares, each (relatively) independent of the other. The following can be added to the article given on that page: 1. The Oblong Square. This is an old and not very fortunate name for a rectangle, one never properly belonging to the nomenclature of mathematics. 2. Circumambulation. In almost every known instance outside of Freemasonry the rite of circumambulation has meant a movement, or procession, or walking in a circle. or circuit; in Freemasonry it is movement along a line that is part circle and part square—a circuit around corners. The Lodge room itself is an Oblong Square in which the members comprise a Circle, Circumambulation is, among other things, a visible representation of that combination of square and circle.

3. "Part upon the square." This is a verbal symbol but it is an independent one, and not merely a commentary on the Square in general. Masons meet upon the level, no member being excluded from other members by any taboo of rank, class, title, or caste and it is expected that they thou thus meet not in theory, nor in some remote and abstract sense, but actually and regularly; but while they are thus meeting they will do and say only what upright men do and say, so that when they part (leave the Lodge) they will not carry away any feeling of hypocrisy or resentment. In this instance the symbolic try-square does not lie in a horizontal plane but in a vertical plane, and one leg is on the level, the Lodge room floor; the other leg is upright.

4. The Forty seventh Proposition, or Pythagorean Theorem. This theorem concerns a right-angled triangle, but a good half of it is composed of the properties of the Square. The Square itself is probably the oldest, or at least one of the oldest, of any Masonic tool, instrument, or action used as a symbol, for in the " Mason window " of some of the oldest cathedrals it is used to symbolize the Mason Craft; but it is probable that the Pythagorean triangle is as old, or almost as old, because the data indicate that it was used as the method for teaching geometry, since so much of Euelid can be deduced from it. Euclid himself worked out a proof for this theorem, one of the very few known to have been his. though it has never been wholly satisfactory to geometricians- our Brother Mason James A. Garfield, discovered a new proof for it as late as the Nineteenth Century.

The Minute Books of the oldest Lodges prove that for a number of years after 1717 Speculative Masons were in confusion about Masonic symbols; differed among themselves as to what symbols to include, differed as to their correct form, and differed as to their symbolic meaning. It is to that period of confusion that we owe the phrase "Working Tool" as applied to the Square (also the Level, Plumb, and Gage); manifestly it is not a tool but an instrument, and it had far more use by the mind (consider today the carpenter's square and the slide rule) than by the hand; in colas sense there was always much Speculative Masonry in the Fraternity even when the great majority of members were working masons.

• SQUARE AND COMPASSES

These two symbols have been so long and so universally combined — to teach us, as says an early instruction, "to square our actions and to keep them within due bounds," they are so seldom seen apart, but are so kept together, either as two Great Lights, or as a jewel worn once by the Master of the Lodge, now by the Past Master—that they have come at last to be recognized as the proper badge of a Master Mason, just as the Triple Tau is of a Royal Arch Mason or the Passion Cross of a Knight Templar.

So universally has this symbol been recognized, even by the profane world, as the peculiar characteristic of Freemasonry, that it has recently been made in the United States the subject of a legal decision. A manufacturer of flour having made, in 1873, an application to the Patent Office for permission to adopt the Square and Compasses as a trade-mark, the Commissioner of Patents, J. M. Thatcher, refused the permission as the mark was a Masonic symbol.

If this emblem were something other than precisely what it is—either less known", less significant, or fully and universally understood—all this might readily be admitted. But, Considering its peculiar character and relation to the public, an anomalous question is presented. There can be no doubt that this device, so commonly worn and employed by Masons, has an established mystic significance, universally recognized as existing; whether comprehended by all or not, is not material to this issue. In view of the magnitude and extent of the Masonic organization, it is impossible to divest its symbols, or at least this particular symbol—perhaps the best known of all—of its ordinary signification, wherever displaced, either as an arbitrary character or otherwise.

It will be universally understood, or misunderstood, as having a Masonic significance; and, therefore, as a trade-mark, must constantly work deception. Nothing could be more mischievous than to create as a monopoly, and uphold by the poser of lacy anything so calculated. as applied to purposes of trade. to be misinterpreted, to mislead all classes, and to constantly foster suggestions of mystery in affairs of business (see Infringing upon Freemasonry, also Imitative Societies, and Clandestine).

In a religious work by John Davies, entitled Summa Totalis, or All in All and the Same Forever, printed in 1607, we find an allusion to the Square and Compasses by a profane in a really Masonic sense. The author, who proposes to describe mystically the form of the Deity, says in his dedication:

Yet I this forme of formelesse Deity,

Drewe by the Squire and Compasse of our Creed.

In Masonic symbolism the Square and Compasses refer to the Freemason's duty to the Craft and to himself; hence it is properly a symbol of brotherhood, and there significantly adopted as the badge or token of the Fraternity. Berage, in his work on the higher Degrees, Les plus secrets Mystéres des Hauts Grades, or The Most Secret Mysteries of the High Grades, gives a new interpretation to the symbol. He says: "The Square and the Compasses represent the union of the Old and New Testaments. None of the high Degrees recognize this interpretation, although their symbolism of the two implements differs somewhat from that of Symbolic Freemasonry.

The Square is with them peculiarly appropriated to the lower Degrees, as founded on the Operative Art; while the Compasses, as an implement of higher character and uses, is attributed to the Decrees, which claim to have a more elevated and philosophical foundation. Thus they speak of the initiate, when he passes from the Blue Lodge to the Lodge of Perfection, as 'passing from the Square to the Compasses,' to indicate a progressive elevation in his studies. Yet even in the high Degrees, the square and compasses combined retain their primitive signification as a symbol of brotherhood and as a badge of the Order."

• SQUARE AND COMPASS FRATERNITY

A college fraternity of Masons with less rigid requirements than its sister fraternity, The Acacia, the Square and Compass began as a college club in Washington and Lee University; after its transformation into a fraternity it received a Charter from the State on May 12, 1917. The nationwide organization is similar to the Grand Lodge system; it has one Square to a State, and these are in a loose federation. The federation has a full-time Secretary; publishes a magazine. Any Master Mason in good standing in a regular Lodge is qualified for membership. (See UNIVERSITY LODGES in this supplement.) A number of Grand Masters along with many Masons among college and university presidents have expressed the hope that the two Masonic college fraternities might lead ultimately to the formation of a large number of campus Lodges, thereby opening a way for American Freemasonry into the circles of learning and scholarship—a thing done long ago in Britain and Europe. The name of the Square and Compass fraternity perpetuates a mistake made by early American Masons about the Working Tool. A compass is an instrument for finding directions; and has never been used as a Masonic symbol. The instrument for drawing a circle has always been called compasses.

• SQUARE, TRIANGLE AND CIRCLE

Visitors to English Chapters of the Royal Arch will recall that there is a peculiar use of these geometrical figures in "firing," the ceremonious unity of all present in recognizing a toast and honoring it by the Brethren. There are also to be found in literature various allusions to geometrical figures. Of these there are so many that no complete compilation may here be attempted. One or two are of sufficient interest to warrant mention. For further information refer to an article by R. I. Clegg in the American Freemason (volume iiu, pages 265-72, April, 1912).

That beloved Brother Robert Burns, born 1759 died 1796 , refers to the rectangle-triangle in his poem "Caledonia." His allusion is usually understood as being more particularly to the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, and is as follows:

Thus hold, independent, unconquered and free Her bright course of glory for ever shall run For brave Caledonia immortal must be; I'll prove it from Euclid as Lear as the sun:— Rectangle-triangle the figure we'll choose; The upright is Chance, and old Time is the base But brave Caledonia's the hypotenuse Then ergo, she'll match them, and match them always. William Shakespeare, born 1564, died 1616, refers to many matters of interest to us. He says, King Lear, first scene, Regan speaking of her love for the king, I profess Myself an enemy to all other toys Which the most perfect square of sense possesses And find I am alone felicitate In your dear highnesses love. Various explanations have been offered for "the next perfect square of sense." Grant Allen interprets it "as the entire domain of sense," Wright by the "most delicately sensitive part of my nature'; Moberly by the "choicest estimate of sense"; while Capell explains it by "the entire domain of sensation." John Foster, Shakespeare Word-Book, prefers an explanation given by Professor Dowden, Atlantic Monthly, September, 1907, where the puzzling lines are compared with others by Edmund Spenser (Faerie Queene, Book II, canto ix, stanza 22). These are as follows: The frame thereof seemed partly circulare And part triangulare; O worke divine! These two the first and last proportions are The one imperfect, mortal feminine Th' other immortal perfect, masculine; And 'twixt them both a quadrate was the base Proportions equally by seven and nine; Nine was the circle sett in heaven's place All which compacted made a goodly diapase.

The last word here, diapase, means a harmonious combination. Professor Dowden discussing "Elizabethan Psychology" of body, soul and spirit, the forms of life or energy, says "The vegetable soul is found apart from the other two in plants, they live and increase in size, and multiply themselves by virtue of this soul. The vegetable and sensible souls are found co-operating in animals; they need only live and grow and multiply, they also feel. In man alone are three souls—vegetable, sensible and rational— found working together." Spenser by this reasoning is considering Alma as the indwelling soul, and the House is the containing body, the architecture of the latter being as in the poetry. Quoting Bartholomew Anglieus we are told that "The vegetable soul, with its three virtues of self-sustaining, growth, and reproduction, is 'like unto a triangle in Geometry.'

The sensible soul is 'like unto a quadrangle, square and four cornered. For in a quadrangle is a line drawn from one corner to another corner, afore it maketh two triangles, and the soul sensible maketh two triangles of virtues. For wherever the soul sensible is, there is also the soul vegetablis. Finally the rational soul is likened to a circle, because the circle is the most perfect of figures, having the greater power of containing than any other. The triangle of Castle Alma is a vegetable soul; a quadrate—identical with Shakespeare's 'square of sense'—is a sensible soul, the circle is the rational soul." Spenser was born in London about 1553, and died in January, 1599. For other references to quaint literary allusions of Masonic interest, see "Was William Shakespear a Freemason?" (Builder, 1919, volume v, page 32).

• SQUAREMEN

The Companies of Wrights, Slaters, etc, in Scotland, in the seventeenth century, were called squaremen They had ceremonies of initiation and a word, sign, and grip, like the Freemasons. Brother Lyon (history of the Lodge at Edinburgh, page 23) says: "The 'Squaremen Word' was given in conclaves of journeymen and apprentices, wrights, slaters, etc., in a ceremony in which the aspirant was blindfolded and otherwise 'prepared'; he was sworn to secrecy, had word, grip, and sign communicated to him, and was afterward invested with a leather apron. The entrance to the apartment, usually a public house, in which the 'brethren' was performed, was guarded, and all who passed had to give the grip. The fees were spent in the entertainment of the Brethren present. Like the Masons, the Squaremen admitted non-operatives."

In the Saint Clair charter of 1628, among the representatives of the Masonic Lodges, we find the signature of "George Liddell, deakin of squarmen and nov quartermaistir" (see History of the Lodge at Edinburgh, page 62). This would show that there must have been an intimate connection between the two Societies or Crafts (see Squaremen, Corporation of).

• SQUAREMEN, CORPORATION OF

The Corporation of Squaremen was originally an Operative Lodge held in Ayr and formed one of the number which constituted the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Minutes were kept but the Minute-Book was lost when lent to Murray Lyon. The Banner used by the Corporation is still preserved by an Ayrshire Freemason and there are other relies in existence.

The organization does not admit any but Mark Masons who hold or have held office in a Craft Lodge or who are Royal Arch Companions. Candidates must have been Master Masons for at least five years and must be thirty years of age or over.

Meetings are held on the first day of each of the five winter months November to April and at the January meeting office bearers are elected. The joining fee is 60 Scottish Merks (£3/5/0 or about $15.75) which includes the Diploma and Apron. There is an obligation, assays (test) piece, signs and secrets, working tools, tracing board and lectures, all different from those of the usual Craft Masonry. All, however, tend to throw light upon the ancient procedure for admission to an operative or working shed.

At present the Order is in a flourishing condition but for some years it was dormant. It was revived by brothers Philip and William Murray who communicated the working and secrets to Brother Alfred A Murray. Not one of the Murrays is related to cither of the others. The above particulars are in letters to us from Brother David Lowe Turnbull Portobello, Scotland, and from the Scottish Masonic historical Directory, 1924 (see Squaremen).

• SQUIN DE FLEXIAN

A recreant Templar, to whom with Noffodei and, as some say, another unknown person, is attributed the invention of the false accusations upon which were based the persecutions and the downfall of the Order of Knights Templar. He seas a native of the city of Beziers, in the south of France, and having been received as a Knight Templar, had made so much proficiency in the order as to have been appointed to the head of the Priory of Montfaucon. Reghellini states that both Squin de Flexian and Noffodei were Templars, and held the rank of Comrnanders; but Dupuy (Condemnation des Templiers) denies that the latter was a Templar. He says: all historians agree that the origin of the ruin of the Templars was the work of the Prior of Montfaucon and of Noffodei, a Florentine, banished from his country and whom nobody believes to have been a Templar. This Prior, by the sentence of the Grand Master, had been condemned, for heresy and for having led an infamous life, to pass the remainder of his days in a prison. The other is reported to have been condemned to rigorous penalties by the Provost of Paris."

Reghellini's account (La Maçonnerie considérée, etc., i, page 451) is more circumstantial. He says: In 1506, two Knights Templar, Noffodei and Florian were punished for crimes, and lost their Commanderies; that of the latter being Montfaucon. They petitioned the Provincial Grand Master of Mount Carmel for a restoration to their offices, but met with a refusal. They then obtained an entrance into the Provincial Grand Master's country-house, near Milan, and having assassinated him, concealed the body in the woods under some thick shrubbery, after With they fled to Paris. there they obtained access to the King, and thus furnished Philip with an occasion for executing his projects, by denouncing the Order and exposing to him the immense Wealth which it possessed. They proposed the abolition of the Order, and promised the King. for a reward, to be its denouncers. The King accepted their proposition, and, assuring them of his protection, pointed out to them the course which they were to pursue. They associated with themselves a third individual called by historians the Unknown, in French, l'Inconnu, and Noffodei and Florian sent a memorial to Enguerand de Marigni, Superintendent of the Finances, in Which they proposed, if he would guarantee them against the attacks of the Order of Templars, and grant them civil existence and rights, to discover to the King secrets which they deemed of more value than the conquest of an empire. As a sequel to this first declaration they addressed to the King an accusation, which was the same as he had himself dictated to them for the purpose of the turn which he desired to the affair. This accusation contained the following charges:

1. That the Order of Templars was the foe of all kings and all sovereign authority, that it communicated secrets to its initiates under horrible oaths, witch the criminal condition of the penalty of death if they divulged them and that the secret practices of their initiations were the consequences of irreligion, atheism, and rebellion.

2. That the Order had betrayed the religion of Christ by communicating to the Sultan of Babylon all the plans and operations of the Emperor Frederick the Second whereby the designs of the Crusaders for the recovery of the Holy Land were frustrated.

3 That the Order prostituted the mysteries most venerated by Christians. by making a Knight, when he has received, trample upon the Cross. the sign of redemption; and abjured the Christian religion by making the neophyte declare that the true God had never died, and never could die, that they carried about them and worshiped a little idol called Bafomet; and that after his initiation the neophyte was compelled to undergo certain obscene practices.

4. That when a Knight was received, the Order bound him by an oath to a complete and blind obedience to the Grand Master which was a proof of rebellion against the legitimate authority,

5. What Good Friday was the day selected for the grand orgies of the Order.

6. That they were guilty of unnatural crimes.

7. That they burned the children of their concubines so as to destroy all traces of their debauchery. These calumnies formed the basis of the longer catalogue of accusations, afterward presented by the Pope, upon which the Templars were finally tried and condemned.

In the preliminary examinations of the accused, Squin de Flexian took an active part as one of the Commissioners. In the pleadings for their defense presented by the Knights, they declare that "Knights were tortured by Flexian de Beziers, Prior of Montfaucon, and by the monk, William Robert, and that already thirty-six had died of the tortures indicted at Paris, and several others in other places."

Of the ultimate fate of these traitors nothing is really known. When the infamous work which they had inaugurated had been consummated by the king and the Pope, as their services were no longer needed, they sank into merited oblivion. The author of the Secret Societies of the Middle Ages (page 268) says; "Squin was afterwards hanged, and Noffodei beheaded, as was said, with little probability, by the Templars."

Hardly had the Templars, in their prostrate condition, the power, even if they had the will, to inflict such punishment. It was not Squin, but Marigni, his abettor, who was hanged at Montfaucon, by order of Louis X, the successor of Philip, two years after his persecution of the Templars. The revenge they took was of a Symbolic character. In the change of the legend of the Third Degree into that of the Templar system, when the martyred James de Molay was substituted for Hiram Abif, the three assassins were represented by Squin de Flexian, .Noffodei, and the Unknown. As there is really no reference in the historical records of the persecution to this third accuser, it is most probable that he is altogether a mythical personage, invented merely to complete the triad of assassins, and to preserve the congruity of the Templar with the Masonic legend. The name of Squin de Flexian, as well as that of Noffodei, have been differently spelled by various writers, to say nothing of the incomprehensible error found in some of the oldest French Cahiers of the Kadosh, such as that of De la Hogue, where the two traitors are named Gerard Tabé and Benoit Mehui. The Processus contra Templarios, or Proceedings against Templars, calls him Esquitts de flexian de Biteriis; and Raynouard always names him Squin de florian, in which he is blindly followed by Reghellini, Ragon, and Thory. But the weight of authority is in favor of Squin de flexian, which appears to be the true name of this Judas of the Templars.

• SRUTI

A Hindu word meaning Revelation. A collective name of those Sanskrit writings supposed by the Hindus to have been revealed by a deity, and applied at first only to the Vedic Mantras and Brahmanas, but afterward extended to the older Upanishads.

• STAFF

A white staff is the proper insignia of a Treasurer. In the order of Profession for laying a foundation-stone as given by brother Preston (Illustrations, 1792 editions page lll), we find "Grand treasurer with his staff." In the United States of America the use of the staff by the Treasurer of a Lodge has been discontinued. It was derived frown the old custom for the Treasurer of the King's Household to carry a staff as the ensign of authority. In the old Customary Books we are told that the Steward or Treasurer of the Household—for the offices were formerly identical—received the office from the King himself by the presentation of a staff in these words: Tennez le baston de nostre rnaison, these words in Old French meaning Receive the stag of our house." Hence the Grand Lodge of England decreed, June 24, 1741 that "in the procession in the hall" the Grand Treasurer should appear "with the staff" (see Constitutions, 1756, page 236).

• STAIRS, WINDING

See Winding Stairs

• STAMPS, MASONIC POSTAGE

In the early days of governmental and other mail delivery systems postmasters (note the master in that word !) used whatever cancellation device they might personally devise, one of the commonest being a cork with a design carved on an end, inked on a pad; this continued until near the end of the Nineteenth Century.

Among the cancellations which are collectors' items are a number with Masonic emblems, square & compasses, triangle, coffin, trowel, G. etc. The richest Masonic period lies between 1851 and 1880. The number of Masonic cancellations in Canada are more numerous proportionately than in the United States; in its issue of May, 1933, page 347, The Masonic Sun of Toronto published a page of 17 reproductions, accredited by it to a book by Mr. Fred Jarratt, a Toronto dealer. The New York Masonic Outlook, Masonic Hall, N.Y.C., published two articles on Masonic cancellations: October, 1927, page 44; April, 1931, page 233; with 31 cuts. It quotes prices as S10.00 up. From 1847 to 1927 there had been among men whose portraits had been used on stamps the following Masons: Washington, Franklin, Jackson, Clay, Hamilton, Perry, Gaffield, Farragut, John Marshall, Roosevelt, McKinley Monroe, Harding, Nathan Hale, Taft and Sullivan

• STANDARD

An ensign in war, being that under which the soldiers stand or to which they rally it's the fight. It is sometimes used in the higher Degrees, in connection with the word Bearer, to denote a particular officer. But the term mostly Unseal to indicate any one of the ensigns of the various Degrees of Freemasonry is Banner. The Grand Standard of the Order of Knights Templar in the United States is described in the Regulations as being "of white woollen or silk stuff, six feet in height and five feet in widths made tripartite at the bottom, fastened at the top to the cross-bar by nine rings; in the center of the field a blood-red passion cross, over which the motto, in hoc signo vinces (By this Sign, Conquer), and under, Non Nobis, Domine non Nobis sed Nomini tuo da Gloriam! (Not unto us, O Lord; not unto us, but to Thy Name be the Glory!). The cross to be four feet high, and the upright and bar to be seven inches wide. On the top of the staff a gilded globe or ball four inches in diameter, surmounted by the patriarchal cross, twelve inches in height. The cross to be crimson, edged with gold."

The Standard of the Order in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is thus described in the fundamental Statutes. It is white with a gold fringe, bearing in the center a black double-headed eagle with wings displayed; the beaks and thighs are of gold; it holds in one talon the golden hilt and in the other the silver blade of an antique sword, placed horizontally from right to left; to the sword is suspended the Latin device, in letters of gold, Deus meumque Jus. The eagle is crowned with a triangle of gold, and holds a purple band fringed with gold and strewn with golden stars.

There is really no Standard of the Order properly belonging to Symbolic or Royal Arch Masonry. Many Grand Chapters, however, and some Grand Lodges in this country, have adopted for a Standard the blazonment of the Arms of Freemasonry first made by Lawrence Dermott for the Atholl Grand Lodge of Freemasons. In the present condition of the ritual, with the disseverance of the Royal Arch Degree from the Master's, and its organization as a distinct system, this Standard, if adopted at all, would be most appropriate to the Grand Chapters, since its charges consist of symbols no longer referred to in the instructions of Symbolic freemasonry.

• STANDARD-BEARER

An Cheer in a Commandery of Knights Templar, whose duty it is to carry and protect the Standard of the Order. A similar officer exists in Several of the higher Degrees.

• STAND TO AND ABIDE BY

Tile Covenant of Freemasonry requires every Freemason "to stand to and abide by" the Laws and Regulations of the Order, whether expressed in the Edicts of the Grand Lodge, the By-laws of his Lodge, or the Landmarks of the Institution The terms are not precisely synonymous, although generally considered to be so. To stand to has a somewhat active meaning, and signifies to maintain and defend the laws; while to abide by is more passive in meaning, and signifies to submit to the award made by such laws.

• STAR

In the French and Scottish Rites lighted candles or torches are called stars when used in some of the ceremonies, especially in the reception of distinguished visitors, where the number of lights or stars with which the visitor is received is proportioned to his rank; but the number is always odd, being 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11.

• STAR AND GARTER

The reference in the Ritual to "golden fleece" and to "the Roman eagle" continues to be a puzzle in the archeology of words.

Lionel Vibert, with whom most will agree, wrote that "fleece" refers not to Jason's Golden Fleece but to the Flemish Order of the Golden Fleece—the woolsak in Parliament is another memorial to the days when wool was the great source of national wealth in both England and the Lowlands. The Roman Eagle was the Badge of the Hanse, or Hanseatic League, which once vitas to Northern Europe, and to the wool trade in particular, what the East India Company later was to India. Charles added a star to the insignia of the Order of the Garter. An Order of the Star as founded by John of France in 1352 but was replaced in the Fifteenth Century by the Order of Michael. In 1429 Philip, Duke of Bergundy, formed the Order of the Golden Fleece in Bruges—it w as popularly called "the Golden Fleece." (Selfridge has some interesting pages on the Mercers Company [ an old London Livery Company] and the Golden Fleece in his Rownance of Commerce.) In the Fifteenth Century the French Kings had even less "government" around them than did the English kings. A French king "farmed out," or "let by contract" the raising and quarter mastering and even the command of armies, the levying of taxes, the building and command of navies, etc.; even the coining of money was let out to private contractors who grew rich on their "seigniorage," or milling fees, and divided their profits with the King.

Thus Charles VII, of whom Joan of Arc was a personal friend and under whom she ranked as an army commander (and not depending on miracles !), signed contracts with Ravant Ladenois for minting coins in Orleans, Portiers, St. Pourcain, Chinon, and in the King's home city of Bourges (the home also of a powerful gild of Freemasons). So also was it with commerce, manufacturing (especially of armor and weapons), etc. The members of the trades, crafts, and gilds with which the Kings thus had to deal, and upon whom they depended for so many purposes, were not members of the hereditary classes of the aristocracy or the nobility and therefore could inherit no titles. One of the original purposes in setting up the honorary Orders was to enable a king to confer a title on some faithful friend or citizen who otherwise could never have received one. King Charles created the Order of the Golden Fleece as a royal honor to the wool trade, to indicate that he was its especial patron, and to encourage the younger sons of noble families to enter it, and it was for such reasons that this Order won renown in the Low Countries and England, the European center of the "fleece," or "staple," or wool industry. The Order must have proved popular from the start, and spread rapidly, because in 1432, only three years after Charles had constituted it, Sir Andre Toulongeon is found in Palestine wearing its insignia. Randle Holme and Elias Ashmole who were among the first of the famous "Accepted Freemasons" were enthusiasts about armory and heraldry; but they were only the first of a long line, and the earliest Speculative Lodges lived in an atmosphere where heraldry, coats of arms, honorary Orders, etc., mere staples of daily conversation.

(On King Charles see Jacques Coeur, by Albert Boardman Kerr; Charles Scribner's Sons; New York; 1927. It is not about Freemasonry, but few books give so vivid a picture of the cities and the times in which Fifteenth Century Freemasons worked; it also gives a broad picture of the almost national wide extent of military architecture, a branch of Medieval Freemasonry of capital importance, and yet one that none of the historians of the Craft has ever examined or described. The history of Medieval Masonry must ever be incomplete until that great lack is supplied One of the first large books published in Europe was a detailed account of military architecture, and of the geometry and engineering involved in it. Castles, forts, redoubts, moats, and fortifications were designed and erected and monopolized by the gilds of Masons.) See also Golden Fleece.

• STAR, BLAZING

See Blazing Star

• STAR, EASTERN

See Eastern Star, Order of the

• STAR, FIVE POINTED

See Five- Pointed Star

• STAR IN THE EAST

The Blazing Star is thus called by those who entertain the theory that there is "an intimate and necessary connection between Masonry and Christianity." This doctrine, which Doctor Oliver thinks is "the fairest gem that Masonry can boast," is defended by him in his early work entitled The Star in the East. The whole subject is discussed in the article Blazing Star, which see.

• STAR OF JERUSALEMA

Degree cited in the nomenclature of Fustier.

• STAR OF THE SYRIAN KNIGHT

In French, Etoile des Chevaliers Syriens. The Order of Syrian Knights of the Star is contained in the collection of Pyron. It is divided into three Degrees—Novice, Professed, and Grand Patriarch.

• STARCK, JOHANN AUGUST VON

J. A. von Starck, whose life is closely connected with the history of German Freemasonry, and especially with that of the Rite of Strict Observance, was born at Schwerin, October 29, 1741. He studied at the University of Göttingen, and was made in 1751 a Freemason in a French Military Lodge. In 1763 he went to St. Petersburg, where he received the appointment of teacher in one of the public schools. There, too, it is supposed that he was adopted into the Rite of Melesino, then flourishing in the Russian capital, and became first acquainted with the Rite of Strict Observance, in which he afterward played so important a part.

After two years' residence at St. Petersburg, Brother von Starck went for a short time to England, and was in August, 1766, in Paris. In 1767 he was Director of the schools at Wismar, where he was Junior Warden of the Lodge of the Three Lions. In 1770 he was called to Königsberg, to occupy the chair of theology, and to fill the post of Court Chaplain. The following year he resigned both offices, and retired to Mettau, to devote himself to literary and philosophical pursuits. But in 1781 the Court at Darmstadt conferred upon him the posts of Chief Preacher and the first place in the Consistory, and there he remained until his death which occurred Mach 3, 1816.

The knowledge that Starck acquired of the Rite of Strict Observance convinced him of its innate weakness, and of the necessity of some reformation. He therefore was led to the idea of reviving the spiritual branch of the Order, a project which he sought to carry into effect, at first quietly and secretly, by gaining over influential Freemasons to his views. In this he so far succeeded as to be enabled to establish, in 1767, the new system of clerical Knights Templar, as a schism from the Strict Observance, and to which he gave the name of Clerks of Relaxed Observance.

It consisted of seven Degrees, as follows:

1. Apprentice

2. Fellow;

3. Master;

4. Young Scottish Master;

5. Old Scottish Master, or Knight of Saint Andrew;

6. Provincial Chapter of the Red Cross;

7. Magus, or Knight of Brightness and Light; which last Degree was divided into five classes, of Novice, Levite, and Priest—the summit of the Order being Knight Priest.

Thus he embodied the idea that Templarism was a hierarchy, and that not only was every Freemason a Templar, but every true Templar was both a Knight and a Priest. Starck, who was originally a Protestant, had been secretly connected with Romanism while in Paris; and he attempted surreptitiously to introduce Roman Catholicism into his new system. He professed that the Rite which he was propagating was in possession of secrets not known to the chivalric branch of the Order; and he demanded, as a prerequisite to admission, that the candidate should be a Roman Catholic, and have previously received the Degrees of Strict Observance.

Starck entered into a correspondence with Von Hund, the head of the Rite of Strict Observance, for the purpose of effecting a fusion of the two branches— the Chivalric and the Spiritual. But, notwithstanding the willingness of Von Hund to accept any league which promised to give renewed strength to his own decaying system, the fusion was never effected. It is true that in 1768 there was a formal union of the two branches at Wismar, but it was neither sincere nor permanent.

At the Congress of Brunswick, in 1775, the clerical branch seceded and formed an independent Order; and after the death of Von Hund the Lodges of the Strict Observance abandoned their name, and called themselves the United German Lodges. The spiritual branch, too, soon began to lose favor with the German Freemasons, partly because the Swedish system was getting to be popular in Germany, and partly because Starck was suspected of being in league with the Catholics, for whose sake he had invented his system. Documentary evidence has since proved that this suspicion was well founded. Ragon says that the Order continued in successful existence until the vear 1800; but Doctor Mackey doubted if it lasted so long.

The German writers have not hesitated to accuse Starck of having been an emissary of the Jesuits, and of having instituted his Rite in the interests of Jesuitism. This, of course, rendered both him and the Rite unpopular, and gave an impetus to its decay and fall. Starck himself, even before his appointment as Court Chaplain at Darmstadt, in 1781, had, by his own confession, not only abandoned the Rite, but all interest in Freemasonry. In 1785 he wrote his Saint Nicaise, which was really anti-Masonic in principle, and in 1787 he published his work Ueber Kripto Catholicesmus, etc., or A Treatise on Secret Catholicism, on Proselyte Making, on Jesuitism, and on Secret Societies, which was a controversial work directed against Nicolai, Gädicke, and Biester. In this book he says:

"It is true that in my youthful days I was a Freemason. It is also true that when the so-called Strict Observance was introduced into Masonry I belonged to it, and was, like others, an Eques, Socius, Armiger, Commendator, Prefect, and Sub-Prior; and having taken some formal cloister-like profession, I have been a Clericus. But I have withdrawn from all that, and all that is called Freemasonry, for more than nine years."

While an active member of the Masonic Order, whatever may have been his secret motives, he wrote many valuable Masonic works, which produced at the time of their appearance a great sensation in Germany. Such were his Apology for the Order of Freemasonry, Berlin, 1778, which went through many editions; on the Design of the Order of Freemasonry, Berlin, 1781; and on the Ancient and Modern Mysteries, 1782. He was distinguished as a man of letters and as a learned theologian, and has left numerous work on general literature and on religion, the latter class showing an evident leaning toward the Roman Catholic faith, of which he was evidently a partisan.

"There is," says Feller ( Universal Biography) "in the life of Starck something singular, that has never been made public." Doctor Mackey deemed the verdict well established, that in his labors for the apparent reformation of Freemasonry there was a deplorable want of honesty and sincerity, and that he abandoned the Order finally because his schemes of ambition failed, and the Jesuitical designs with which he entered it svere frustrated.

• STARE SUPER VIAS ANTI QUAS

Latin expression, meaning To stand on the ancient paths. An adage, appropriately applied as a Masonic motto to inculcate the duty of adhering to the ancient landmarks.

• STATE

The political divisions of the United States have been called States and Territories. In every State and in every populous Territory there was established a Grand Lodge and a Grand Chapter, each of which exercises exclusive jurisdiction over all the Lodges and Chapters within its political boundaries; nor does it permit the introduction of any other Grand Lodge or Grand Chapter within its limits; so that there is, and can be, but one Grand Lodge and one Grand Chapter in each State. In most of the States there has also been erected a Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters, and a Grand Comnuandery of Knights Templar, which claim the same right of exclusive jurisdiction (see Jurisdictior of a Grand Lodge).

• STATIONS

The positions occupied by the subordinate officers of a Lodge are called Places, as "the Junior Deacon's place in the Lodge." But the positions occupied by the Master and Wardens are called Stations, as "the Senior Warden's station in the Lodge." This is because these three officers, representing the sun in his three prominent points of rising, culminating, and setting, are supposed to be stationary, and therefore remain in the spot appropriated to them by the instructions, while the Deacons and other officers are required to move about from place to place in the Lodge.

A representative explanation of the location of the Stations to be occupied by Grand Lodge Officers of Massachusetts is given (see page 100, in the 1918 book of Constitutions and Regulations of that State) The M. W. Grand Master, in the East, at the Head of the Grand Lodge. The R. W. Deputy Grand Master, in the East, next to and left of the Grand Master.The R. W. Senior Grand Warden, in the West. The R. W. Junior Grand Warden, in the South. The M. W. Past Grand Masters, in the East at the right of the Grand Master, and the Junior Past Grand Master, next to the Grand Master. The R. W. Past Deputy Grand Masters, in the East at the right of the Past Grand Masters. The R. W. Past Grand Wardens, in the East, at the right of the Past Deputy Grand Masters. The R. W. Grand Treasurer, on the right in front of the Grand Master. The R. W. Grand Secretary, on the left, in front of the Grand Master. The R. W. District Deputy Grand Masters, in the East on the left of the Deputy Grand Master. The R. W. Grand Marshal, Upon the left of the Grand Master, in front of the Grand Secretary. The W. and Rev. Grand Chaplains, in front of and on the right and left of the M. W. Grand Master, near the altar. The W. Grand Lecturers, on the right of the Senior Grand Deacon. The W. Senior Grand Deacon, upon the right of the Grand Master, in front of the Grand Treasurer. The W. Junior Grand Deacon, in the West at the right of the Senior Grand Warden. The W. Grand Stewards, in the South, two upon the right and two upon the left of the Junior Grand Warden, upon each side, one Steward in front of the other. The W. Grand Sword-Bearer, at the left of the Grand Marshal. The W. Grand Standard-Bearer, at the left of the Grand Sword-Bearer. The W. Grand Pursuivants, near the door of entrance to the Grand Lodge. The Wor. Grand Organist, at the Organ. The Wor. Grand Tyler, outside of the entrance to the Grand Lodge.

• STATUTE OF HENRY VI

See Laborers, Statutes of and Statutes Relating to Freemasons.

• STATUTES

The permanent rules by which a subordinate Lodge is governed are called its By-Laws; the regulations of a Grand Lodge are called its Constitution: but the laws enacted for the government of a Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite are denominated Statutes.

• STATUTES RELATING TO FREEMASONS

The laws of England have never contained more than a few references to the Masonic Order. It has been assumed that a Statute of 1425 (3 Henry VI, chapter i) referred to Freemasons. This Statute forbids the holding of "Chapiters and Congregations" by Masons but this did not refer to the General Assemblies of the Craft but was one of a group of regulations known as the Statutes of Laborers enacted from time to time from Edward III to the reign of Elizabeth. This referred only to laborers. An Act passed in 1799 (39 George III, chapter 79, Sedition Act) states specifically that Freemasons are exempted from the ruling, as does also the Act of 1817 (57 George III, chapter 19). Certain groups or congregations were named Unlawful combinations" and to avoid this appellation the only thing necessary for the Masonic Order to do was to have the Lodge register annually with the Clerk of the Peace the names of members of a Lodge. The Irish Constabulary Act of 1836 (6 and 7 William IV, chapter 13), permitted persons appointed under it to belong to the "Society of Freemasons," but to no other secret society. Brother Dudley Wright quotes an instance where the Craft narrowly escaped being included in a bill presented into the House of Commons in 1799 for the suppression of seditious and secret meetings. Rowland Burdon, who was Master of the Palatine Lodge from 1793 to 1796. was at that time the member for Durham County and when the bill was first read he became alarmed at the possibility of it prohibiting the meeting of Masonic Lodges. He immediately sent a message to William White, Grand Secretary, suggesting the convening of the Grand Officers with the result that the bill was amended and two words "Freemasons excepted" introduced, which averted the danger.

Brother Hawkins (Concise Cyclopedia) says, "The laws of England are almost entirely silent with regard to Freemasons, and they only allude to the Society in order to grant it exemption from the Acts passed in 1799 (39 George III, chapter 79, Sedition Act) and in 1817 (57 George III, chapter 19) with the object of suppressing seditious societies. In order to claim this exemption and thus avoid being deemed an 'unlawful combination,' the names of members of a Lodge must be registered annually with the Clerk of the Peace. Similarly on the passing of the Irish Constabulary Act of 1836 (6 and 7 William IV, chapter 13) persons appointed under it were permitted to belong to 'the Society of Freemasons,' but to no other secret society" (see Laborers, Statutes of).

• STEINBACH, ERWIN VON

See Erwin son Steinbach

• STEINMETZ

German, meaning a stone-mason. For an account of the German Fraternity of Steinmetzen (see Stone-Masons of the Middle Ages).

• STELLATO SEDET SOLO

Latin, meaning He sits on his starry throne. A symbolic expression in the Twenty-eighth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

• STEP

The Step can hardly be called a mode of recognition, although Apuleius informs us that there was a peculiar step in the Osiriac initiation which was deemed a sign (see Sign). It is in Freemasonry rather an esoteric usage of the ritual. The steps can be traced back as far as to at least the middle of the eighteenth century, in the rituals of which they are described The custom of advancing in a peculiar manner and form, to some sacred place or elevated personage, has been preserved in the customs of all countries, especially among the Orientalists, who resort even to prostrations of the body when approaching the throne of the sovereign or the holy part of a religious edified.

The steps of Freemasonry are symbolic of respect and veneration for the altar, whence Masonic light is to emanate. In former times, and ho some of the advanced and other Degrees in various parts of the world, a bier or coffin was placed in front of the altar, as a well-known symbol, and in passing over this to reach the altar, those various positions of the feet were necessarily taken which constitute the proper mode of advancing. Respect was thus necessarily paid to the memory of a worthy artist as well as to the holy altar.

Brother Lenning says of the steps—which the German Masons call die Schritte der Aufzunehmenden meaning the steps of the recipients, and the French, les pas Mysterieux, the mysterious steps—that "every degree has a different number, which are made in a different way, and have an allegorical meaning." Of the "allegorical meaning" of those in the Third Degree, we have spoken above as explicitly as would be proper. Gädicke says: "The three grand steps symbolically lead from this life to the source of all knowledge." It must be evident to every Master Mason, without further explanation, that the three steps are taken from the place of darkness to the place of light, either figuratively or really over a eosins the symbol of death, to teach symbolically that the passage from the darkness and ignorance of this life is through death to the light and knowledge of the eternal life. And this, from the earliest times, was the true symbolism of the step.

• STEPS ON THE MASTER'S CARPET

The three steps delineated on the Master's Carpet, as one of the symbols of the Third Degree, refer to the three steps or stages of human life—youth, manhood, and old age. This symbol is one of the simplest forms or modifications of the mystical ladder, which pervades all the systems of initiation ancient and modern (see Carpet).

• STERKIN

One of the three Assassins, according to the Hiramic legend of some of the advanced Degrees. Lenning says the word means vengeance, but does not state his authority. Str are the letters of the Chaldaic verb to strike a blowup, and it may be that the root of the name will be found there; but the Masonic corruptions of Hebrew words often defy the rules of etymology. Perhaps this and some kindred words are mere anagrams, or corruptions introduced into the advanced Degrees by the adherents of the Pretender, who sought in this way to do honor to the friends of the House of Stuart, or to east infamy on its enemies (see Romvel).

• STEWARDS

The officers in a Symbolic Lodge, whose duties are, to assist in the collection of dues and subscriptions; to provide the necessary refreshments, and make a regular report to the Treasurer; and generally to aid the Deacons and other officers in the performance of their duties. They usually carry white rods, and the jewel of their office is a cornucopia, which is a symbol of plenty.

• STEWARDS, GRAND

See Grand Stewards

• STEWARDS' LODGE

The Maryland Constitution of 1794 provided for a committee of five Brethren, one the Grand Master, to be Stewards of the Grand Charity Fund. Regulations adopted in 1799 gave this committee, or Stewards' Lodge, "authority to hear and determine all matters concerning Freemasonry that shall be laid before them, except making new regulations." During the recess of Grand Lodge this body granted Charters, ordered programed and processions of the Craft, heard trials and appeals, and supervised Masonic finances. A new Constitution in 1872 ended the existence of this Lodge then comprising the Masters and one Past Master of each of the Baltimore Lodges with the Deputy Grand Master presiding. Other Grand Lodges, as Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, have had in their early history Grand Stewards but nowhere except in New York, perhaps, and until 1844 or 1845, did they possess power similar to the Grand Stewards Lodge of Maryland (see Freemasonry in Maryland, Brother E. T. Schultz, volume iv, pages 8 and 9). In England there is a Lodge of the Grand Stewards (see Grand Stewards' Lodge).

• STIRLING

A city in Scotland which was the seat of a Lodge called the Stirling Ancient Lodge, which the author of the introduction to the General Regulations of the Supreme Grand Chapter of Scotland says conferred the degrees of Royal Arch, Red Cross or Ark, the Sepulcher, Knight of Malta, and Knights Templar until about the beginning of the eighteenth century, when two Lodges were formed—one Lodge for the cultivation of Saint John's Masonry, which was the old one, and a new Body called the Royal Arch, for advanced Degrees; although it, too, soon began to confer the first three Degrees. The Ancient Lodge joined the Grand Lodge of Scotland at its formation in 1736, but the new Lodge remained independent until 1759.

The same authority tells us that "in the Stirling Ancient Lodge are still preserved two old, rudely engraved brass plates: one of these relates to the first two degrees of Masonry; the other contains on the one side certain emblems belonging to a Master's Lodge, and on the reverse five figures, the one at the top is called the Redd Cross or Ark. At the bottom is a series of concentric arches, which might be mistaken for a rainbow, were there not a keystone on the summit, indicative of an arch. The three other figures are enclosed within a border; the upper is called the Sepulcher; the second, Knight of Malta; and the third, Knights Templar. The age of these plates is unknown, but they can scarcely be more modern than the beginning or middle of the seventeenth century."

So circumstantial a description, inserted, too, in a book of official authority, would naturally lead to the conclusion that these plates must have been in existence in 1845, when the description was written. If they ever existed, their have now disappeared, nor have any traces of them been discovered. Brother W. James Hughan, whose indefatigable labors have been rewarded with so many valuable discoveries, has failed, in this search, to find success. He says in the Freemason, "I spent some weeks, in odd hours, looking up the question a few years ago, and wrote officials in Edinburgh and at Stirling, and also made special inquiries at Stirling by kind co-operation of Masonic students who also investigated the matter; but all our many attempts only resulted in confirming what I was told at the outset, namely, that 'No one knows aught about them, either in Stirling or elsewhere. The friends at Stirling say the plates were sent to Edinburgh, and never returned, and the Fraternity at Edinburgh declared they were returned and have since been lost."

• STOCKINGS

In the eighteenth century, when knee-breeches constituted a portion of the eostulne of gentlemen, Freemasons were required, by a ritualistic regulation, to wear white Stockings. The fashion having expired, the regulation is no longer in force.

• STOLKIN

In the Elu Degrees (elu, the French word meaning elected or chosen has an especial and familiar connection with certain of the first grades of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) this is the name of one of those appointed to search for the criminals commemorated in the legend of the Third Degree. It is impossible to trace its derivation to any Hebrew root. It may be an anagram of a name perhaps that of one of the friends of the house of Stuart.

• STONE

The stone, on account of its hardness has been from the most ancient times a symbol of strength, fortitude, and a firm foundation. The Hebrew word Eben, which signifies a stone, is derived, by Gesenius, from an obsolete root, Ab(ln, to build, whence aban, an architect; and he refers it to A manah, which means a column, a covenant, and truth. The stone, therefore, says Portal (Egyptian Symbols), may be considered as the symbol of faith and truth: hence Christ taught the very principle of symbology, when he called Peter, who represented faith, the rock or stone on which he would build his Church.

But in Hebrew as well as in Egyptian symbology the stone was also sometimes the symbol of falsehood. Thus the name of Typhon, the principle of evil in the Egyptian theogony, was always written in the hieroglyphic characters with the determinative sign for a stone. But the stone of Typhon was a hewn stone, which had the same evil Signification in Hebrew. Henec Jehovah says in Exodus, ' Thou shalt not build me an altar of hewn stone", and Joshua built, in Mount Ebal, "an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron." The hewn stone was therefore a symbol of evil and falsehood; the unhewn stone of good and truth. This must satisfy us that the Masonic symbolism of the stone, which is the converse of this, has not been derived from either the Hebrew or the Egyptian symbology, but sprang from the architectural ideas of the Operative Masons; for in Freemasonry the rough ashlar, or unhewn stone, is the symbol of man's evil and corrupt condition; while the perfect ashlar, or the hewn stone, is the symbol of his improved and perfected nature.

• STONE, ANNAPOLIS THE

Dr. Charles T. Jackson, Boston, a geologist, discovered this stone in 182T, on the Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia. It was a slab of trap-rock, and was inscribed with the Square and Compasses and the date 1606. Dr. Jackson gave the stone to Justice T. C. Haliburton (author of Sam Slich), who in turn left it to his son. His son gave it to the Canadian Institute, Toronto, in order to have it inserted in the walls of the Institute's new Building. The stone-masons blunderingly plastered it over, and ever since it has been impossible to discover where it lies in the walls. Its discovery, inscriptions and date have never been open to question. There were Lodges in England and Scotland at the time, predominantly Operative; it is possible that a sufficient number were brought to Nova Scotia to erect buildings to have a Lodge of their own; or it may be that an individual Mason carved the rock for some private purpose; in either event a Mason, or Masons, were here on the Continent one year before the settlement at Jamestown, Va., and fourteen years before the landing at Plymouth.

• STONE, CORNER

See Corner-Stone

• STONE, CUBICAL

See Cubical Stone

• STONE-MASONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

The history of the origin and progress of the Brotherhood of Stone Masons in Europe, during the Middle Ages, is of great importance, as a study, to the Masonic scholar, because of the intimate connection that existed between that brotherhood and the Fraternity of freemasons. Indeed, the history of the one is but the introduction to the history of the other. In an historical excursus, we are compelled to take up the speculative science where we find it left by the operative art. Hence, whoever shall undertake to write a history of Freemasonry, must give, for the completion of his labors a very full consideration to the brotherhood of Stone-Masons.

In the year 1820, there issued from the press of Leipsic, in Germany, a work, by Doctor Christian Ludwig Steiglitz, under the title of Von Altdeutscher Baukunst that is, An Essay on the Old German Architcture, published in 1820. In this work the author traces, with great exactness, the rise and the progress of the fraternities of Stone-Masons from the earliest times, through the Middle Ages, until their final absorbtion into the associations of Freemasons. From the labors of Doctor Steiglitz, collated with some other authorities in respect to matters upon which is either silent or erroneous, Doctor Mackey compiled the following sketch:

It is universally admitted that, in the early ages of Christianity, the clergy were the most important patrons of the arts and sciences. This was because all learning was then almost exclusively confined to ecclesiastics. Very few of the laity could read or writes and even kings affixed the sign of the cross, in the place of their signatures, to the Charters and other documents which they issued, because, as they frankly confessed, of their inability to write their flames; and hence comes the modern expression of signing a paper, as equivalent so subscribing the name.

From the time of Charlemagne, in the eighth century, to the middle of the twelfth, all knowledge and practice of architecture, painting, and sculpture were exclusively confined to the monks; and bishops personally superintended the erection of the churches and cathedrals in their dioceses, because not only the principles, but the practice of the art of building were secrets scrupulously maintained within the walls of cloisters, and utterly unknown to laymen. brother Cawthorne dissents at this point and says this view was long held, but is by no means correct, for we now know that there were many scholarly architects during this period of supposed darkness. Many of the founders of the Monastic Orders, continues Doctor Mackey, and especially among these Saint Benedict, made it a peculiar duty for the Brethren to devote themselves to architecture and church building. The English monk Winfrid, better known in ecclesiastical history as Saint Boniface, and who, for his labors in Christianizing that country, has been styled the Apostle of Germany, followed the example of his predecessors in the erection of German monasteries. In the eighth century he organized an especial class of monks for the practice of building, under the name of Operarii, or Craftsmen, and Magistri operum, or Masters of the Works.

The labors and duties of these monks were divided. Some of them designed the plan of the building; others were painters and sculptors; others were occupied in working in gold and silver and embroider; and others again, who were called Caementarii , or Stone-Masons, undertook the practical labors of construction. Sometimes, especially in extensive buildings, where many workmen were required, laymen were also employed, under the direction of the rnonks. So extensive did these labors become, that bishops and abbots often derived a large portion of their revenues from the earnings of the workmen in the monasteries. Among the laymen who were employed in the monasteries as assistants and laborers, many were, of course, possessed of superior intelligence. The constant and intimate association of these with the monks in the prosecution of the same design led to this result, that in process of time, gradually and almost unconsciously, the monks imparted to them their art secrets and the esoteric principles of architecture. Then, by degrees, the knowledge of the arts and sciences went from these monkish builders out into the world, and the laymen architects, withdrawing from the ecclesiastical fraternities, organized brotherhoods of their own.

Such was the beginning of the Stone-Masons in Germany, and the same thing occurred in other countries. These Brotherhoods of Masons now began to be called upon, as the monks formerly had been, when an important building, and especially a church or a cathedral, was to be erected. Eventually they entirely superseded their rnonkish teachers in the prosecution of the art of building about the beginning of the twelfth century.

To their knowledge of architecture they added that of the other sciences, which they had learned from the monks. Like these, too, they devoted themselves to the higher principles of the art, and employed other laymen to assist their labors as stone-masons. And thus the union of these architects and stone-masons presented, in the midst of an uneducated people, a more elevated and intelligent class, engaged as an exclusive association in building important and especially religious edifices.

But now a new classification took place. As formerly, the monks, who well the sole depositories of the secrets of high art, separated themselves from the laymen, who were entrusted with only the manual labor of building; so now the more intelligent of the laymen, who had received these secrets from monks, were in turn distinguished as architects from the ordinary laborers, or common masons. The latter knew only the use of the trowel and mortar, while the former were occupied in devising plans for building and the construction of ornaments by sculpture and skillful stone-cutting.

|The Reviser of this work may perhaps to advantage inject a few lines here upon an assumption made by Doctor Makey and many other writers. This belief is well illustrated by the above paragraph. While the conclusion is a debatable one yet there are those who hesitate in crediting to the religion of the Middle Ages all that is valuable in medieval art. Beautiful penmanship is exhibited by manuscripts of that time written and illuminated by skilled monks. But that they " were the sole depositories of the secrets of high art" is quite another and a large conviction questioned by some such critical scholars as Dr. G. G. Coulton in the Lowell Lectures at Boston, Massachusetts in the spring of 1923 (see Art and the Reformation, 1928, published by Basil Blackwell, Oxford, England).

Every student reads the preceding and the following paragraphs with the reservation in his mind that the laymen then were likely enough expert Craftsmen hired by the monks because they and not their religious superiors had the technical knowledge and the artistic wisdom to contrive and supervise as well as to do manual labor upon the finest of architectural structures. These laymen were themselves fully competent artists according to the latest records and any assertion suggesting the contrary conviction based upon any lingering and quite common conclusion that they lacked these artistic qualifications and that the monks exclusively possessed them, should be carefully checked with all the ascertained facts which to say the least do not conclusively establish claims of that sort.

Doctor Mackey alludes rightly to the superior intelligence of the laymen builders, but this complimentary reference can truthfully be much enlarged; they were the cathedral architects of their times. As Doctor Coulton said (page 69) of a great era of church-building, " Even at this time of exceptional fervor and prosperity, there is no real evidence that any but a very small minority of the monks worked themselves, either as designers or as Craftsmen."] These brotherhoods of high artists soon won great esteem, and many privileges and franchises were conceded to them by the municipal authorities among whom they practiced their profession. Their places of assembly wele called Hütten, Logen, or Lodges, and the members took the name of Steinmetzen. Their patron saint was Saint John the Baptist, who was honored by them as the mediator between the Old and the New Covenants, and the first martyr of the Christian religion. To what condition of art these Freemasons of the Middle Ages had attained, we may judge from what Henry Hallam says of the edifices they erected—that they "united sublimity in general composition with the beauties of variety and form, skillful or at least fortunate effects of shadow and light, and in some instances extraordinary mechanical science'" (Europe in the Middle Ages iv, page 280).

And he subsequently adds (page 284), as an involuntary confirmation of the truth of the sketch of their origin just given, that the mechanical execution of the buildings was "so far beyond the apparent intellectual powers of those times, that some have ascribed the principal ecclesiastical structures to the Fraternity of Freemasons, depositories of a concealed and traditionary science. There is probably some ground for this opinion, and the earlier archives of that mysterious association, if they existed, might illustrate the progress of Gothic architecture, and perhaps reveal its origin." These archives do exist, or many of them; and although unknown to Hallam because they were out of the course of his usual reading, they have been thoroughly sifted by recent Masonic scholars, especially by our German and English Brethren; and that which the historian of the Middle Ages had only assumed as a plausible conjecture has, by their researches, been proved to be a fact.

The prevalence of Gnostic symbols—such as lions, serpents, and the like—in the decorations of churches of the Middle Ages, have led some writers to conclude that the Knights Templar exercised an influence over the architects, and that by them the Gnostic and Ophite symbols were introduced into Europe. But Doctor Steiglitz denies the correctness of this conclusion. He ascribes the existence of Gnostic symbols in the church architecture to the fact that, at an early period in ecclesiastical history, many of the Gnostic dogmas passed over into Christendom with the Oriental and Platonic philosophy and he attributes their adoption in architecture to the natural compliance of the Architects or Masons with the predominant taste in the earlier periods of the Middle Ages for mysticism, and the favor given to grotesque decorations, which were admired without any knowledge of their actual import. Steiglitz also denies any deduction of the Builders' Fraternities, or Masonic Lodges, of the Middle Ages from the Mysteries of the old Indians, Egyptians, and Greeks; although he acknowledges that there is a resemblance between the organizations. This, however, he attributes to the fact that the Indians and Egyptians preserved all the sciences, as well as the principles of architecture, among their secrets, and because, among the Greeks, the artists were initiated into their Mysteries, so that, in the old as well as in the new brotherhoods, there was a purer knowledge of religious truth, which elevated them as distinct associations above the people. In like manner, he denies the descent of the Masonic Fraternities from the sect of Pythagoreans, which they resembled only in this: that the Samian sage established schools which were secret, and were based upon the principles of geometry.

But Steiglitz thinks that those are not mistaken who trace the Associations of Masons of the Middle Ages to the Roman Colleges, the Collegia Caementariorum, because these colleges appear in every country that was conquered and established as a province or a colony by the Romans, where they erected temples and other public buildings, and promoted the civilization of the inhabitants. They continued until a late period. But when Rome began to be convulsed by the wars of its decline, and by the incursions of hordes of barbarians, they found a welcome reception at Byzantium, or Constantinople, whence they subsequently spread into the west of Europe, and were everywhere held in great estimation for their skill in the construction of buildings.

In Italy the Associations of Architects never entirely ceased, as we may conclude from the many buildings erected there during the domination of the Ostrogoths and the Longobards. Subsequently when civil order was restored, the Masons of Italy were encouraged and supported by popes, princes, and nobles. And Muratori tells us, in his Historia d'Italia, that under the Lombard Kings the inhabitants of Como were so superior as masons and bricklayers, that the appellation of Magistri Comacini, or Masters from Como, became generic to all those of the profession (see Comacine Masters).

In England, When the Romans took possession of it, the Corporations, or Colleges of Builders, also appeared who were subsequently continued in the Fraternity of Freemasons, probably established, as Steiglitz thinks, about the middle of the fifth century, after the Romans had left the island. The English Masons were Subjected to many adverse difficulties, from the repeated incursions of Scots, Picts, Danes, and Saxons, which impeded their active labors; yet mere they enabled to maintain their existence, until, in the year 926, they held that General Assembly at the City of York which framed the Constitutions that governed the English Craft for eight hundred years, and which is claimed to he the oldest Masonic record now extant. It is but fair to say that the recent researches of Brother Hughan and other English writers have thrown a doubt upon the authenticity of these Constitutions, and that the very existence of this work Assembly has been denied and practically disproved. In France, as in Germany, the Fraternities of Architects originally sprang out of the connection of las builders with the monks in the era of Charlemagne. The French Masons continued their Fraternities throughout the Middle Ages, and erected many cathedrals and public buildings. We have now arrived at the middle of the eleventh century, tracing the progress of the Fraternities of Stone-Masons from the time of Charlemagne to that period. At that time all the architecture of Europe was in their hands. Under the distinctive name of traveling freemasons they passed from nation to nation, constructing churches and cathedrals wherever they were needed. Of their organization and customs, Sir Christopher Wren, in his Parentalia, gives the following account: "Their government was regular, and where they fixed near the building in hand, they made a camp of huts. A surveyor governed in chief; every tenth man was called a Warden, and overlooked each nine."

Thomas Hope, who, from his peculiar course of studies, was better acquainted than Henry Hallam with the history of these Traveling Freemasons, thus speaks, in his Essay on Architecture, of their organization at this time, by which they effected an identity of architectural science throughout all Europe: "The architects of all the sacred edifices of the Latin Church, wherever such arose—North, South, East, or West—thus derived their science from the same central school; obeyed in their designs the dictates of the same hierarchy; were directed in their constructions by the same principles of propriety and taste; kept up with each other, in the most distant parts to which they might be sent, the most constant correspondence; and rendered every minute improvement the property of the whole body, and a new conquest of the art." Working in this way, the Stone-Masons as corporations of builders, daily increased in numbers and in power. In the thirteenth century they assumed a new organization, which allied them more closely than ever with that brotherhood of Speculative Freemasons into which they were finally merged in the eighteenth century, in England, but not in Germany, France, or Italy. These Fraternities or Associations became at once very popular. Many of the potentates of Europe, and among them the Emperor Rudolph I, conceded to them considerable powers of jurisdiction, such as would enable them to preserve the most rigid system in matters pertaining to building, and would facilitate them in bringing master builders and stone-masons together at any required point.

Pope Nicholas III granted the Brotherhood, in 1278, Letters of Indulgence, which were renewed by his successors, and finally, in the next century, by Pope Benedict XII. The Steinmetzen, as a Fraternity of Operative Masons, distinguished from the ordinary masons and laborers of the craft, acquired at this time great prominence, and were firmly established as an association. In 1452 a General Assembly was convened at Strasburg, and a new Constitution framed, which embraced many improvements and modifications of the former one. But seven years afterward, in 1459, Jost Dotzinger, then holding the position of architect of the Cathedral of Strasburg, and, by virtue of his office, presiding over the Craft of Germany, convened a General Assembly of the Masters of all the Lodges at the City of Ratisbon.

There the code of laws which had been adopted at Strasburg in 1452, under the title of Statutes and Regulations of the Fraternity of Stone-Masons of Strasburg was fully discussed and sanctioned. It was then also resolved that there should be established four Grand Lodges—at Strasburg, at Vienna, at Cologne, and at Zurich; and they also determined that the Master Workman, for the time being, of the Cathedral of Strasburg should be the Grand Master of the Masons of Germany. These Constitutions of Statutes are still extant, and are older than any other existing Masonic record of undoubted authenticity, except Halliwell & Cooke Manuscripts. They were "kindly and affably agreed upon," according to their preamble, "for the benefit and requirements of the Masters and Fellows of the whole Craft of Masonry and Masons in Clermany," Besides the Strasburg Constitution of 1459 there are two other very important documents of the Steinmetzen of Germany: The Torgau Ordinances of 1462 and the Brothers' Book of 1563. General Assemblies, at which important business was transacted, were held in 1464 at Ratisbon, and in 1469 at Spire, while provincial assemblies in each of the Grand Lodge Jurisdictions were annually convened.

In consequence of a deficiency of employment, from political disturbances and other causes, the Fraternity now for a brief period declined in its activity. But it was speedily revived when, in October, 1498, the Emperor Maximilian I confirmed its Statutes, as they had been adopted at Strasburg, and recognized its former rights and privileges. This Act of Confirmation was renewed by the succeeding Emperors, Charles V and Ferdinand I. In 1563 a General Assembly of the Masons of Germany and Switzerland was convened at the City of Basle by the Grand Lodge of Strasburg. The Strasburg Constitutions were again renewed with amendments, and what was called the Stone-Masons' Law, das Steinwerkrecht, was established.

The Grand Lodge of Strasburg continued to be recognized as possessing supreme appellate jurisdiction in all matters relating to the Craft. Even the Senate of that city had acknowledged its prerogatives, and had conceded to it the privilege of settling all controversies in relation to matters connected with building; a concession which was, however, revoked in 1620, on the charge that the privilege had been misused.

Thus the operative Freemasons of Germany continued to work and to cultivate the high principles of a religious architectural art. But on March 16, 1707, up to which time the Fraternity had uninterruptedly existed, a Degree of the Imperial Diet at Ratisbon dissolved the connection of the Lodges of Germany with the Grand Lodge of Strasburg, because that city had passed into the power of the French. The head being now lost, the subordinate Bodies began rapidly to decline. In several of the German cities the Lodges undertook to assume the name and exercise the functions of Grand Lodges; but these were all abolished by an Imperial Edict in 1731, which at the same time forbade the administration of any oath of secrecy, and transferred to the government alone the adjudication of all disputes among the Craft.

From this time we lose sight of any national organization of the Freemasons in Germany until the restoration of the Order, in the eighteenth century, through the English Fraternity. Thus we see, as Brother Cawthorne here observes, that the great Order of the Steinmetzen of Germany took no part in the formation of the Speculative Freemasons.

But in many cities—as in Basle, Zurich, Hamburg, Dantzic, and Strasburg—they preserved an inde pendent existence under the Statutes of 1559, although they lost much of the profound symbolical knowledge of architecture which had been possessed by their predecessors. Before leaving these German Stone-Masons, it is worth while to say something of the symbolism which they preserved in their secret teachings. They made much use, in their architectural plans, of mystical numbers, and among these five, seven, and nine were especially prominent. Among colors, gold and blue and white possessed symbolic meanings. The foot rule, the compasses, the square, and the gavel, with some other implements of their art, were consecrated with a spiritual signification.

The East was considered as a sacred point; and many allusions were made to Solomon's Temple, especially to the pillars of the porch, representations of which are to be found in several of the cathedrals.

In France the history of the Free Stone-Masons was similar to that of their German Brethren. Originating, like them, from the cloisters, and from the employment of laymen by the monkish architects, they associated themselves together as a Brotherhood superior to the ordinary stone-masons. The connection between the Masons of France and the Roman Colleges of Builders was more intimate and direct than that of the Germans, because of the early and very general occupation of Gaul by the Roman legions: but the French organization did not materially differ from the German. Protected by popes and princes, the Masons were engaged, under ecclesiastical patronage, in the construction of religious edifices.

In France there was also a peculiar association, the Pontifices, or Bridge Builders, closely connected in design and character with the Masonic Fraternity, and the memory of which is still preserved in the name of one of the Degrees of the Scottish Rite, that of Grand Pontiff. The principal seat of the French Stone-Masonry was in Lombardy, whence the Lodges were disseminated over the kingdom, a fact which is thus accounted for by Thomas Hope: "Among the arts exercised and improved in Lombardy," he says, "that of building held a pre-eminent rank, and was the more important because the want of those ancient edifices to which they might recur for materials already wrought, and which Rome afforded in such abundance, made the architects of these more remote regions dependent on their own skill and free to follow their own conceptions." But in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the necessity for their employment in the further construction of religious edifices having ceased, the Fraternity began to decline, and the Masonic Corporations were all finally dissolved, with those of other workmen, by Francis I, in 1539. Then originated that system which the French call Compagnorlaye, a system of independent Gilds or brotherhoods, retaining a principle of community as to the art which they practiced, and with, to some extent, a secret bond, but without elevated notions or general systematic organizations. The societies of Compagnons were, indeed, but the debris of the Building Masons. Masonry ceased to exist in France as a recognized system until its revival in the eighteenth century. We see, then, in conclusion, that the Stone-Masons — coming partly from the Roman Colleges of Architects, as in England, in Italy, and in France, but principally, as in Germany, from the cloistered brotherhoods of monks—devoted themselves to the construction of religious edifices.. They consisted mainly of architects and skillful operatives; but—as they were controlled by the highest principles of their art, were in possession of important professional secrets, were actuated by deep sentiments of religious devotion, and had united with themselves in their labors, men of learning, wealth, and influence—to serve as a proud distinction between themselves and the ordinary laborers and uneducated workmen, many of whom were of servile condition.

Subsequently, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, they threw off the operative element of their institution, and adopting an entirely speculative character, they became the Freemasons of the present day, and established on an imperishable foundation that sublime Institution which presents over all the habitable earth the most wonderful system of religious ane moral symbolism that the world ever saw.

• STONE OF FOUNDATION

The Stone of foundation constitutes one of the most important and abstruse of all the symbols of Freemasonry. It is referred to in numerous legends and traditions not only of the Freemasons, but also of the Jewish Rabbis, the Talmudic writers, and even the Mussulman doctors. Many of these, it must be confessed, are apparently puerile and absurd; but most of them, and especially the Masonic ones, are deeply interesting in their allegorical signification.. The Stone of Foundation is, properly speaking, a symbol of the higher Degrees. It makes its first appearance in the Royal Arch, and forms indeed the most important symbol of that Degree. But it is so intimately connected, in its legendary history, with the construction of the Solomonic Temple, that it must be considered as a part of Ancient Craft Masonry, although he who confines the range of his investigations to the first three Degrees will have no means, within that narrow limit, of properly appreciating the symbolism of the Stone of Foundation. As preliminary to the inquiry, it is necessary to distinguish the Stone of Foundation, both in its symbolism and its legendary history, from other stones which play an important part in the Masonic Ritual, but which are entirely distinct from it.

Such is the corner-stone, which was always placed in the northeast corner of the building about to be erected, and to which such a beautiful reference is made in the ceremonies of the First Degree; or the Keystone, which constitutes an interesting part of the Mark Master s Degree; or, lastly, the capstone, upon which all the ritual of the Most Excellent Master's Degree is founded. They are all, in their proper places, highly interesting and instructive Symbols, but have no conneetion whatever with the Stone of Foundation, whose symbolism it is our present object to discuss. Nor, although the Stone of Foundation is said, for peculiar reasons, to have been of a cubical form, must it be confounded with that stone called by the Continental Freemasons the cubical stone—the pierre critique of the French and the cubik stein of the German Freemasons but which in the English system is known as the perfect ashlar.

The Stone of Foundation has a legendary history and a symbolic signification which are peculiar to itself, and which differ from the history and meaning which belong to these other stones. We propose first to define this Masonic Stone of Foundation, then to collate the legends which refer to it, and afterward to investigate its significance as a symbol. To the Freemason who takes a pleasure in the study of the mysteries of his Institution, the investigation cannot fail to be interesting, if it is conducted with and ability.

But in the very beginning, as a necessary preliminary to any investigation of this kind, it must be distinctly understood that all that is said of this Stone of Foundation in Freemasonry is to be strictly taken in a mythical or allegorical sense. Doctor Oliver, while undoubtedly himself knowing that it was simply a symbol, has written loosely of it as though it were a substantial reality; and hence, if the passages in his Historical Landmarks, and in his other works which refer to this celebrated stone, are accepted by his readers in a literal sense, they will present absurdities and puerilities which would not occur if the Stone of Foundation was received, as it really is, as a myth conveying a most profound and beautiful symbolism.

It is such that it is to be treated here; and, therefore, if a legend is recited or a tradition related, the reader is requested on every occasion to suppose that such legend or tradition is not intended as the recital or relation of what is deemed a fact in Masonic history, but to wait with patience for the development of the symbolism which it conveys. Read in this spirit, as all the legends of Freemasonry should be read, the legend of the Stone of Foundation becomes one of the most important and interesting of all the Masonic symbols.

The Stone of Foundation is supposed, by the theory which establishes it, to have been a stone placed at one time within the foundations of the Temple of Solomon, and afterward, during the building of the second Temple, transported to the Holy of Holies. It was in form a perfect cube, and had inscribed upon its upper face, within a delta or triangle, the sacred Tetragrammaton, or Ineffable Name of God. Doctor Oliver, speaking with the solemnity of a historian, says that Solomon thought that he had rendered the house of God worthy, so far as human adornment could effect, for the dwelling of God, "when he had placed the celebrated Stone of Foundation, on which the sacred name was mystically engraven, with solemn ceremonies, in that sacred depository on Mount Moriah, along with the foundations of Dan and Asher, the center of the Most Holy Place, where the Ark was overshadowed by the Shekinah of God." The Hebrew Talmudists, who thought as much of this stone, and had as many legends concerning it, as the Masonic Talmudists, called it eben shatijah, or Stone of Foundation, because as they said, it had been laid by Jehovah as the foundation of the world, and hence the apocryphal Book of Enoch speaks of the "stone which supports the corners of the earth."

This idea of a foundation-stone of the world was most probably derived from that magnificent passage of the Book of Job (xxxviii, F7) in which the Almighty demands of Job,

Where wast thou, when I laid the foundation of the earth? Declare, since thou hast such knowledge! Who fixed its dimensions, since thou knowest! Or who stretched out the line upon it? Upon what were its foundations fixed? And who laid its corner-stone, When the morning stars sang together. And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Noyes, whose translation we have adopted as not materially differing from the common version, but more poetical and more in the strain of the original, thus explains the allusions to the foundation-stone: "It was the custom to celebrate the laying of the corner-stone of an important building With music, songs, shouting, etc. Hence the morning stars are represented as celebrating the laying of the cornerstone of the earth."

Upon this meager statement has been accumulated more traditions than appertain to any other Masonic symbol. The Rabbis, as has already been intimated, divide the glory of these apocryphal histories with the Freemasons; indeed, there is good reason for a suspicion that nearly all the Masonic legends owe their first existence to the imaginative genius of the writers of the Jewish Talmud. But there is this difference between the Hebrew and the Masonic traditions: that the Talmudic scholar recited them as truthful histories, and swallowed, in one gulp of faith, all their impossibilities and anachronisms; while the Masonic scholar has received them as allegories, whose value is not in the facts, but in the sentiments which they convey.

With this understanding of their meaning, let us proceed to a collation of these legends. In that blasphemous work, the Toldoth Jessie, or Life of Jesus, written, it has been supposed, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, we find the following account of this wonderful stone: "At that time (the time of Jesus) there was in the House of the Sanctuary (that is, the Temple) a stone of foundation, which is the very stone that our father Jacob anointed with oil, as it is described in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Genesis. On that stone the letters of the Tetragrammaton were inscribed, and whosoever of the Israelites should learn that name would be able to master the world. To prevent, therefore, any one from learning these letters, two iron dogs were placed upon two columns in front of the Sanctuary. If any person, having acquired the knowledge of these letters, desired to depart from the Sanctuary, the barking of the dogs, by magical power, inspired so much fear that he suddenly forgot what he had acquired." This passage is cited by the learned Buxtorf in his Lexicon Talmudicum; but in his copy of the Toldoth Jeshu, Doctor Mackey found another passage, which gives some additional particulars, in the following words: "At that time there was in the Temple the ineffable name of God, inscribed upon the Stone of Foundation. For when King David was digging the foundation for the Temple, he found in the depths of the excavation a certain stone on which the name of God was inscribed. This stone he removed and deposited it in the Holy of Holies."

The same puerile story of the barking dogs is repeated still more at length. It is not pertinent to the present inquiry, but it may be stated, as a mere matter of curious information, that this scandalous book, which is throughout a blasphemous defamation of our Savior, proceeds to say, that he cunningly obtained a knowledge of the Tetragrammaton from the Stone of Foundation, and by its mystical influence was enabled to perform his miracles.

The Masonic legends of the Stone of Foundation, based on these and other rabbinical reveries, are of the most extraordinary character, if they are to be viewed as histories, but readily reconcilable with sound sense, if looked at only in the light of allegories.

They present an uninterrupted succession of events, in which the Stone of Foundation talcs a prominent part, from Adam to Solomon, and from Solomon to Zerubbabel. Thus, the first of these legends, in order of time, relates that the Stone of Foundation was possessed by Adam while in the Garden of Eden; that he used it as an altar, and so reverenced it that, on his expulsion from Paradise, he carried it with him into the world in which he and his descendants were afterward to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Another legend informs us that from Adam the Stone of Foundation descended to Seth. From Seth it passed by regular succession to Noah, who took it with him into the Ark, and after the subsidence of the Deluge made on it his first thank-offering. Noal left it on Mount Ararat, where it was subsequently, found by Abraham, who removed it, and constantly used it as an altar of sacrifice. His grandson Jacob took it with him when he fled to his uncle Laban in Mesopotamia, and used it as a pillow when, in the vicinity of Luz, he had his celebrated vision.

Here there is a sudden interruption in the legendary history of the stone, and we have no means of conjecturing how it passed from the possession of Jacob into that of Solomon. Moses, it is true, is said to have taken it with him out of Egypt at the time of of the exodus, and thus it may have finally reached Jerusalem. Dr. Adam Clarke repeats, what he very properly calls a foolish tradition, that the stone on which Jacob rested his head was afterward brought to Jerusalem, thence carried after a long lapse of time to Spain, from Spain to Ireland, and from Ireland to Scotland, where it was used as a seat on which the kings of Scotland sat to be crowned. Edward I, we know, brought a stone to which this legend is attached from Scotland to Westminster Abbey where under the name of Jacob's Pillow, it still remains, and is always placed under the chair upon which the British Sovereign sits to be crowned; because there is an old distich which declares that wherever this stone is found the Scottish Kings shall reign. But this Scottish tradition would take the Stone of Foundation away from all its Masonic connections, and therefore it is rejected as a Masonic legend.

The legends just related are in many respects contradictory and unsatisfactory, and another series, equally as old, is now very generally adopted by Masonic scholars as much better suited to the symbolism by which all these legends are explained. This series of legends commences with the patriarch Enoch, who is supposed to have been the first consecrator of the Stone of Foundation. The legend of Enoch is so interesting and important in this connection as to excuse its repetition in the present work.

The legend in full is as follows: Enoch, under the inspiration of the Most High, and in obedience to the instructions which he had received in a vision, built a Temple underground on Mount Moriah, and dedicated it to God. His son, Methuselah, constructed the building, although he was not acquainted with his father's motives for the erection. This temple Consisted of nine vaults, situated perpendicularly beneath each other, and communicating by apertures left in each vault.

Enoch then caused a triangular plate of gold to be made, each side of which was a cubit long; he enriched it with the most precious stones, and encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form. On the plate he engraved the true name of God, or the Tetragrammaton, and placing it en a cubical stone, known thereafter as the Stone of Foundation, he deposited the whole within the lowest arch.

When this subterranean building was completed, he made a door of stone, and attaching to it a ring of iron, by which it might be occasionally raised, he placed it over the opening of the uppermost arch, and so covered it that the aperture Could not be discovered Enoch, himself, was permitted to enter it but once a year, and on the deaths of Enoch, Methusalem, and Lamedh, and the destruction of the word by the Deluge, all knowledge of the vault or subterranean temple and of the Stone of Foundation, with the Sacred and Ineffable Name inscribed upon it, was lost for ages to the world. At the building of the first Temple of Jerusalem, the Stone of Foundation again makes its appearance. Reference has already been made to the Jewish tradition that David, when digging the foundations of the Temple, formal in the excavation which he was making a certain stone, on which the Ineffable Name of God was inscribed, and which stone he is said to have removed and deposited in the holy of Holies. That King David laid the foundations of the Temple upon which the superstructure was subsequently erected by Solomon, is a favorite theory of the legend mongers of the Talmud.

The Masonic tradition is substantially the same as the Jewish, but it substitutes Solomon for David, thereby giving a greater air of probability to the narrative, and it supposes that the stone thus discovered by Solomon was the identical one that had been deposited in his secret vault by Enoch. This Stone of Foundation, the tradition states, was subsequently removed by King Solomon and, for wise purposes, deposited in a secret and safer place. In this the Masonic tradition again agrees with the Jewish, for we find in the third chapter of the Treatise on the Temple, the following narrative: "There was a stone in the Holy of Holies, on its west side, on which was placed the Ark of the Covenant, and before the Pot of Manna and Aaron's rod. But when Solomon had built the Temple, and foresaw that it was at some future time to be destroyed, he constructed a deep and Winding vault underground, for the purpose of concealing the ark, wherein Josiah afterwards, as we learn in the Second Book of Chronicles (xxiv, 3) deposited it with the Pot of Manna, the Rod of Aaron, and the Oil of Anointing."

The Talmudical book Yoma gives the same tradition, and says that "the Ark of the Covenant was placed in the center of the Holy of Holies, upon a stone rising three fingers' breadth above the floor, to be as it were a pedestal for it." This stone, says Prideaux, in his Old and New Testament Connected (volume I, page 148), "the Rabbins call the Stone of Foundation, and give us a great deal of trash about it."

There is much controversy as to the question of the existence of any Ark in the second Temple. Some of the Jewish writers assert that a new one was made; others that the old one was found where it had been concealed by Solomon; and others again contend that there was no Ark at all in the temple of Zerubbabel, but that its place was supplied by the Stone of Foundation on which it had originally rested.

Royal Arch Masons well know how all these traditions are sought to be reconciled by the Masonic legend, in which the Substitute Ark and the Stone of Foundation play so important a part.

In the Thirteenth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, the Stone of Foundation is conspicuous as the resting-place of the Sacred Delta. In the Royal Arch and Select Master's Degrees of the American Rite, the Stone of Foundation constitutes the most important part of the ritual. In both of these it is the receptacle of the Ark, on which the ineffable Name is inscribed. Lee, in his Temple of Solomon, has devoted a chapter to this Stone of Foundation, and thus recapitulates the Talmudic and Rabbinical traditions on the subject: "Vain and furious are the feverish dreams of the ancient Rabbins concerning the Foundation Stone of the Temple. Some assert that God placed this stone in the center of the world, for a future basis and Settled consistency for the earth to rest upon.

Others held this stone to be the first matter out of which all the beautiful visible beings of the world have been hewn forth and produced to light. Others relate that this was the very same stone laid by Jacob for a pillow under his head, in that night when he dreamed of an angelic vision at Bethel, and he afterwards anointed and consecrated it to God. Which when Solomon had found, no doubt by forged revelation or some tedious Search like another Rabbi ,Selemoh, he durst not but lay it sure, as the principal Foundation-Stone of the Temple. Nay, they do say further, he caused to be engraved upon it the Tetragrammaton, or the Ineffable Name of Jehovah."

It will be seen that the Masonic traditions on the Subject of the Stone of Foundation do not differ very materially from these Rabbinical ones, although they add a few additional circumstances. In the Masonic legend, the Foundation-Stone first makes its appearance, as we have already said, in the days of Enoch, who placed it in the bowels of Mount Moriah. There it was subsequently discovered by King Solomon, who deposited it in a crypt of the first Temple, where it remained concealed until the foundations of the second Temple were laid, when it was discovered and removed to the Holy of Holies.

But the most important point of the legend of the Stone of foundation is its intimate and constant connection with the Tetragrammaton or Ineffable Name. It is this name, inscribed upon it within the Sacred and Symbolic Delta, that gives to the stone all its Masonic value and significance. It is upon this fact, that it was so inscribed, that its whole symbolism depends.

Looking at these traditions in anything like the light of historical narratives, we are compelled to consider them, to use the plain language of Lee, "but as so many idle and absurd conceits." We must go behind the legend, which we acknowledge at once to be only an allegory, and study its symbolism. The following facts can, we think, be readily established from history. First, that there was a very general prevalence among the earliest nations of antiquity of the worship of stones as the representatives of Deity; secondly, that in almost every ancient temple there was a legend of a sacred or mystical stone; thirdly, that this legend is found in the Masonic system; and lastly, that the mystical stone there has received the none of the Stone there has received the name of the Stone of Foundation.

Now, as in all the other systems the stone is admitted to be symbolic, and the traditions connected with it mystical, we are compelled to assume the same predicates of the Masonic stone. It, too, is Symbolic, and its legend a myth or an allegory. Of the fable, myth, or allegory, Bailly has said that, "subordinate to history and philosophy, it only deceives that it may the better instruct us. Faithful in preserving the realities which are confided to it, it covers with its seductive envelop the lessons of tile one and the truths of the other." It is from this standpoint that we are to view the allegory of the Stone of Foundation, as developed in one of the most interesting and important symbols of Freemasonry.

The fact that the mystical stone in all the ancient religions was a symbol of the Deity, leads us necessarily to the conclusion that the Stone of Foundation was also a symbol of Deity. And this symbolic idea is strengthened by the Tetragrammaton, or sacred name of God, that was inscribed upon it. This Ineffable Name sanctifies the stone upon which it is engraved as the symbol of the Grand Architect. It takes from it its heathen Signification as an idol, and consecrates it to the worship of the true God. The predominant idea of the Deity, in the Masonic system, connects him with his creative and formative power. God is to the Freemason Al Gabil, as the Arabians called him, that is, The Builder; or, as expressed in his Masonic title, the Grand Architect of the Universe, by common consent abbreviated in the formula G. A. O. T. U. Now, it is evident that no Symbol could so appropriately suit him in this character as the Stone of Foundation, upon which he is allegorically supposed to have erected his world. Such a symbol closely connects the creative work of God, as a pattern and exemplar, with the workman's erection of his temporal building on a similar foundation stone.

But this Masonic idea is still further to be extended. The great object of all Masonic labor is Divine Truth. The search for the Lost Word is the search for truth. But Divine Truth is a term Synonymous with God. The Ineffable Name is a symbol of truth, because God, and God alone, is truth. It is properly a Scriptural idea. The Book of Psalms abounds with this sentiment. Thus it is said that the truth of the Lord "reacheth unto the clouds," and that "his truth endureth unto all generations."

If, then, God is Truth, and the Stone of Foundation is the Masonic symbol of God, it follows that it must also be the symbol of Divine Truth. When we have arrived at this point in our speculations, we are ready to show how all the myths and legends of the Stone of Foundation may be rationally explained as parts of that beautiful "science of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," which is the acknowledged definition of Freemasonry. In the Masonic system there are two Temples: the First Temple, in which the Degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry are concerned, and the Second Temple, with which the higher Degrees, and especially the Royal Arch, are related. The first Temple is symbolic of the present life; the Second Temple is symbolic of the life to come. The First Temple, the present life, must he destroyed; on its foundations the Second Temple, the life eternal, must be built.

But the mystical stone was placed by King Solomon in the foundations of the first Temple. That is to say, the First Temple of our present life must be built on the sure foundation of Divine Truth, "for other foundation can no man lay." But although the present life is necessarily built upon the foundation of truth, yet we never thoroughly attain it in this sublunary sphere. The Foundation Stone is concealed in the First Temple, and the Master Mason knows it not. He has not the true word. He receives only a substitute.

In the Second Temple of the future life, we have passed from the grave which had been the end of our labors in the First. We have removed the rubbish and have found that Stone of Foundation which had been hitherto concealed from our eyes. We now throw aside the substitute for truth which had contented us in the former Temple, and the brilliant effulgence of the Tetragrammaton and the Stone of Foundation are discovered, and thenceforth we are the possessors of the true word—of Divine Truth. And in this way, the Stone of Foundation, or Divine Truth, concealed in the First Temple, but discovered and brought to light in the Second, will explain that passage of the Apostle: "For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know face to face."

And so the result of this inquiry is, that the Masonic Stone of Foundation is a symbol of Divine Truth, upon which all Speculative Freemasonry is built, and the legends and traditions which refer to it are intended to describe, in an allegorical way, the progress of truth in the soul, the search for which is a Freemason's labor, and the discovery of which is his reward.

• STONE MANUSCRIPT

This manuscript is no longer in existence, having been one of those which was destroyed, in 1720, by some too scrupulous Brethren. Brother Preston (1792 edition, page 167), described it as "an old manuscript, which was destroyed with many others in 1720, said to have been in the possession of Nicholas Stone, a curious sculptor under Inigo Jones." Preston gives, however, an extract from it, which details the affection borne by Saint Alban for the Freemasons, the wages he gave them, and the Chalter which he obtained from the King to hold a General Assembly (see Saint Alban). Anderson (Constitutions, 1738, page .99), who calls Stone the Warden of Inigo Jones, intimates that he wrote the manuscript, and gives it as authority for a statement that in 1607 Jones held the Quarterly Communications. The extract made by Preston, and the brief reference by Anderson, are all that is left of the Stone Manuscript.

• STONE, NICHOLAS

See Stone Manuscript

• STONE PAVEMENT

Doctor Oliver says that, in the English system, "the stone pavement is a figurative appendage to a Master Masons' Lodge, and, like that of the Most Holy Place in the Temple, is for the High Priest to walk on." This is not recognized in the American system, where the stone or mosaic pavement is appropriated to the Entered Apprentice's Degree.

• STONE, REJECTED

Saint Matthew records (xxi, 42) that our Lord said to the Chief Priests and Elders, "Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner'?" Commenting on this, Dr. Adam Clarke says: "It is an expression borrowed from masons, who, finding a stone which, being tried in a particular place, and appearing improper for it, is thrown aside and another taken; however, at last, it may happen that the very stone which had been before rejected may be found the most suitable as the head stone of the corner." This is precisely the symbolism of the Mark Master or Fourth Degree of the American Rite, where the rejected stone is suggested to the neophyte "as a consolation under all the frowns of fortune, and as an encouragement to hope for better prospects." Brother G. F. Yates says that the Symbolism of the rejected stone in the present Mark Degree is not in the original Master Mark Mason's Degree, out of which Webb manufactured his ritual, but was introduced by him from some other unknown source.

• STONE SQUARERS

See Giblim

• STONE, WHITE

Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, sentence was given in courts of judicature by white and black stones or pebbles. Those who were in favor of acquittal cast a white stone, and those who were for condemning, a black one. So, too, in popular elections a white stone was deposited by those who were favorable to the candidate, and a black one by those who wished to reject him. In this ancient practice we find the origin of white and black balls in the Masonic ballot. The white stone is also a symbol of victory.

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white Stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it" (Revelation iii, 17). Here is a recognition of the conquerors the stone as in the Roman tessera gladiatoria being the reward of the victorious in the arena, a mark of distinction. There was also the tessera hospital is, a token or pledge of hospitality, a stone broken in halves, each half retained by both of two friends, and they or any of their families could at a future time assemble and unite the parts of the stone to prompt and renew the fellowship as of old. Hence, too, the white stone has become the symbol of absolution in judgment, and of the conferring of honors and rewards. The white stone with the new name, mentioned in the Mark Master's Degree, refers to the keystone.

• STONE, WILLIAM LEETE

An American journalist and writer, who was born in the State of New York in 1792, and died in 1844. He was the author of several literary works, generally of a biographical character. But his largest work was Letters on Masonry and anti-Masonry addressed to the Hon. John Quincy Adams, New York, 1832. This was one of the productions which were indebted for their appearance to the anti-Masonic excitement that prevailed at that time in this country. Although free from the bitterness of tone and abusive language which characterized most of the contemporaneous writings of the anti-Masons, it is, as an argumentative work, discreditable to the critical acumen of the author. It abounds in statements made without authority and unsustained by proofs, while its premises being in most instances false, its deductions are necessarily illogical.

• STONESWORSHIP

This was, perhaps, the earliest form of fetishism. Before the discovery of metals, men were accustomed to worship unhewn stones. From China, whom Sanchoniathan calls the first Phenician, the Canaanites learned the practice, the influence of which we may trace in the stone pillar erected and consecrated by Jacob. The account in Genesis (xxviii, 18, 22) is that "Jacob took the stone that he had put for his pillows and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it; and he called the name of that place Bethel, saving, This stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house." The Israelites were repeatedly commanded to destroy the stone idols of the Canaanites, and Moses corrects his own people when falling into this species of idolatry.

Various theories have been suggested as to the origin of stone-worship. Lord Kames' theory was that stones erected as monuments of the dead became the place where posterity paid their veneration to the memory of the deceased, and that the monumental stones at length became objects of worship, the people having lost sight of the emblematical signification, which was not readily understood. Others have sought to find the origin of stone-worship in the stone that was set up and anointed by Jacob at Bethel, and the tradition of which had extended into the heathen nations and become corrupted. It is certain that the Phoenicians worshiped sacred stones united the name of Boetylia, which word is evidently derived from the Hebrew Bethel, and this undoubtedly gives some appearance of probability to the theory.

Out a third theory supposes that the worship of stones was derived from the unskilfulness of the primitive sculptors, wily unable to frame, by their meager principles of plastic art, a true image of the God whom they adored, were content to substitute in its place a rude or scarcely polished stone. Hence the Greeks, according to Pausanias, originally used unhewn stones to represent their deities, thirty of which, that historian says, he saw in the City of Pharoe. These stones were of a cubical form, and, as the greater number of them were dedicated to the god Hermes, or Mercury, they received the generic name of Hermac. Subsequently, with the improvement of the plastic art, the head was added.

So difficult, indeed, was it, in even the most refined era of Grecian civilization, for the people to divest themselves of the influences of this superstition, that Theophrastus characterizes the superstitious man as one who could not resist the impulse to bow to those mysterious stones which served to mark the confluence of the highways.

One of these consecrated stones was placed before the door of almost every house in Athens. They were also placed in front of the temples, in the gymnasia or schools, in libraries, and at the corners of streets, and in the roads. When dedicated to the god Terminus, whose Special province, was held to be boundaries, they were used as landmarks, and placed as such upon the concurrent lines of neighboring possessions.

The Thebans worshiped Bacchus under the form of a rude, square stone. Arnobius says that Cybele was represented by a small stone of a black color. Eusebius cites Porphyry as saying that the ancients represented the Deity by a black stone, because His nature is obscure and inserutable. The reader will here be reminded of the black stone, Hadsjar el Aswad, placed in the southwest corner of the Kaaba at Mecca, which was worshiped by the ancient Arabians, and is still treated with religious veneration by the modern Mohammedans. The Mussulman priests, however, say that it was at first white, of such surprising splendor to be seen at the distance of four days journey, but that it has been blackened by the tears of pilgrims. The Druids, it is well known, had no other images of their gods but cubical or Sometimes columnar stones, of which Toland gives several instances.

The Chaldeans had a sacred stone, which they held in great veneration, under the name of Mnizuris, and to which they sacrificed for the purpose of evoking the Good Demon. Stone-worship existed among the early American races. Squire quotes Skinner as asserting that the Peruvians used to set up rough stones in their fields and plantations, which were worshiped as protectors of their crops. And Gama says that in Mexico the presiding god of the spring was often represented without a human body, and in place thereof a pilaster or square column, whose pedestal was covered with various sculptures Indeed, so universal was this stone-worship, that Godfrey Higgins, in his Celtic Druids, says that "throughout the world the first object of idolatry seems to have been a plain, unwrought stone, placed in the grounds as an emblem of the generative or procreative powers of nature." And Bryant, in his Anallysts of Ancient Mythology, asserts that "there is in every oracular temple some legend about a stone."

Without further citations of examples from the religious usages of antiquity, it will, we think, be conceded that the cubical stone formed an important part of the religious worship of primitive nations. But Cudworth, Bryant, Faber, and all other distinguished writers who have treated the Subject, have long since established the theory that the Pagan religions were eminently symbolic. Thus, to use the language of Dudley, the pillar or stone was "adopted as a symbol of strength and firmness—a symbol, also, of the Divine Power, and, by a ready inference, a symbol or idol of the Deity Himself." And this symbolism is confirmed by Phurnutus, whom Toland quotes as saying that the god Hermes was represented without hands or feet, being a cubical stone, because the cubical figure betokened his solidity and stability.

The influence of this old stone-worship, but of course divested of its idolatrous spirit, and developed into the system of Symbolic instruction, is to be found in Freemasonry, where the reference to sacred stones is made in the Foundation-Stone, the Cubical Stone, the Corner-Stone, and some other symbols of a similar character. Indeed, the stone supplies Masonic science with a very important and diversified symbolism.

As stone-worship was one of the oldest of the deflections from the pure religion, so it was one of the last to be abandoned. A Decree of the Council of Aries, which was held in the year 452, declares that "if, in any diocese, any infidel either lighted torches or worshiped trees, fountains, or stones, or neglected to destroy them, he should be found guilty of sacrilege." A similar decree was subsequently issued by the Council of Tours in 507, that of Nantes in 658, and that of Toledo in 681. Charlemagne, of France, in the eighth century, and Canute, of England, in the eleventh, found it necessary to execrate and forbid the worship of stones.

Even in the present day, the worship has not been altogether abandoned, but still exists in some remote districts of Christendom. Scheffer, in his Description of Lapland, cited by Tennent, in Notes and Queries (first series, v, 122) says that in 1673 the Laplanders worshiped an unhewn stone found upon the banks of lakes and rivers, and which they called kied kie jubmal, that is, the stone god. Martin, in his Description of the Western Islands (page 88) says: "There is a stone set up near a mile to the south of Saint Columbus's church, about eight feet high and two broad. It is called by the natives the bounng stone; for when the inhabitants had the first sight of the church, they set up this, and then bowed, and said the Lord's Prayer." He also describes several other stones in different parts of the islands which were objects of veneration. Finally, in a work published years ago by the Earl of Roden, entitled Progress of the Reformation in Ireland, he says (page 51), that at Inniskea, an island off the coast of Mayo, "a stone carefully wrapped up in flannels is brought out at certain periods to be adored; and when a storm arises, this god is supplicated to send a greek on their coasts." Tennent, to whom we are indebted for these citations, adds another from Borlase, who, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, says (book iii, chapter ii, page 162), that "after Christianity took place, many (in Cornwall) continued to worship these stones; coming thither with lighted torches, and praying for safety and success." It is more than probable that in many remote regions of Europe, where the sun of Christianity has only darted its dimmest rays, this old worship of sacred stones still remains.

• STRAITS SETTLEMENTS

A crown colony of Great Britain, situated in the East Indies, on anel off the Malay Peninsula, comprising Singapore, Labuan, Penang, the Dindings, Province Wellesley, Malacea, and a number of small islands. Neptune Lodge, No. 344, was established by the Duke of Athol on September 6, 1809, but the Lodge only existed for ten years. It was revived again by the Duke of Sussex but its name was once more dropped from the register m 1862. Lodges Zetland in the East, No. 748, warranted 1845, No. 1555, warranted 1875, and Saint George, No. 1152, warranted 1867, comprise the Province of the Eastern Archipelago which was established with Brother W. H. Read as Provincial Grand Master in 1858. Provinces abroad from the year 1866 have been styled Districts to distinguish them from Provinces in England.

• STRASBURG, CATHEDRAL OF

This has always been considered as one of the finest Gothic buildings in Europe. The original cathedral was founded in 504, but in 1007 it was almost completely destroyed by lightning. The present edifice was begun in 1015 and completed in 1439. The Cathedral of Strasburg is very closely connected with the history of Freemasonry. The most important Association of Master Builders, says Stieglitz (vow Altdeutscher Baukunst, or An Essay on the Old German Architecture) for the culture and extension of German art, was that which took place at Strasburg under Erwin von Steinbach.

As soon as this architecture had undertaken the direction of the works at the Strasburg Cathedral, he summoned Freemasons out of Germany and Italy, and formed with them a Brotherhood. Thence hütten, or Lodges, were scattered over Europe. In 1459, on April 25, says the Abbé Grandidier, the Masters of many of these Lodges assembled at Ratisbon and drew up an Act of Fraternity, which made the Master of the Works at Strasburg, and his successors, the Perpetual Grand Masters of the Fraternity of German Freemasons.

This was confirmed by the Emperor Maximilian in 1498. By the Statutes of this Association, the Haupt-Hütte. Grand or Mother Lodge of Strasburg, was invested with a judicature, without appeal, over all the Lodges of Germany. Strasburg thus takes in German Freemasonry a position equivalent to that of legendary Lodge York in the Freemasonry of England, or Kilwinning in that of Scotland. And although the Haupt-Hütte of Strasburg with all other Haupt-Hütten were abolished by an Imperial Edict on August 16, 1731, the Mother Lodge never lost its prestige. "This," says Findel (History of Freemasonry, page 72), "is the case even now in many places in Germany; the Saxon Stone-Masons still regarding the Strasburg Lodge as their chief Lodge" (see stone-Masons of the Middle Ages).

• STRASBURG, CONGRESSES OF

Two important Masonic Congresses have been held at Strasburg. First Congress of Strasburg. This was convoked in 1275 by Erwin von Steinbach. The object was the establishment of a Brotherhood for the continuation of the labors on the Cathedral. It was attended by a large concourse of Freemasons from Germany and Italy. It was at this Congress that the German builders and architects, in imitation of their English Brethren assumed the name of Freemasons, and established a system of regulations for the government of the Craft (see Combinations of Freemasons).

Second Congress of Strasburg. This was convoked by the Grand Lodge, or Haupte-Hütte of Strasburg, in 1564, as a continuation of one which had been held in the same year at Basle. Here several statutes were adopted, by which the Steinwerksrecht, or Stone Masons' Law, was brought into a better condition.

• STRASBURG, CONSTITUTIONS OF

On April 25, 1459, nineteen Bauhütten, or Lodges, in Southern and Central Germany met at Ratisbon, and adopted regulations for the government of the German Stone-Masons. Another meeting was held shortly afterward at Strasburg, where these Statutes were definitively adopted and promulgated, under the title of Ordenunge der Steinmetzen Strasburg, or Constitutions of the Stone-Masons of Strasburg.

They from time to time underwent many alterations, and were confirmed by Maximilian I in 1498, and subsequently by many succeeding Emperors. This old document has several times been printed; in 1810, by Krause, in his drei altesten Kunsterkunden der Freimaurerbruderschaft; in 1819, by Heldmann, in die drei ältested geschichtlichen Denkmale der deutschen Friemaurerbrüderschaft, in 1844, by Heideloff, in his Bauhütte des Mittelalters in ihrer wahren Bedeutung; Findel also, in 1866, inserted portions of it in his Geschichte der Freimaurerei. Findel says the Strasburg Constitution was first printed, from a well-authenticated Manuscript, by Heldmann.

The invocation with which these Constitutions commence is different from that of the English Constitutions The latter begin thus: "The might of the Father of Heaven, with the wisdom of the blessed Son, through the grace of God and goodness of the Holy Ghost, that be three persons in one Godhead, be with us," etc. The Strasburg Constitutions begin: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and of our gracious Mother Mary, and also her blessed servants, the holy four crowned martyrs of everlasting memory"; etc. The reference to the Virgin Mary and to the four crowned martyrs is found in none of the English Constitutions except the oldest of them, the Halliwell or Regius Manuscript (line 498). But Kloss has compared the Strasburg and the English statutes, and shown the great similarity in many of the regulations of both.

• STRENGTH

This is said to be one of the three principal supports of a Lodge, as the representative of the whole Institution, because it is necessary that where should be Strength to support and maintain every great and important undertaking, not less than there should be Wisdom to contrive it, and Beauty to adorn it. Hence, Strength is symbolized in Freemasonry by the Doric Column, because, of all the orders of architecture, it is the most massive; by the Senior Warden, because it is his duty to strengthen and support the authority of the Master; and by Hiram of Tyre, because of the material assistance that he gave in men and materials for the construction of the Temple.

• STRICT OBSERVANCE, RITE OF

The Rite of Strict Observance was a modification of Freemasonry based on the Order of Knights Templar, and introduced into Germany in 1754 by its founder, the Baron von Hund.

It was divided into the following seven Degrees:

1. Apprentice

2. Fellow Craft

3. Master

4. Scottish Master

5. Novice

6. Templar

7. Professed Knight

According to the system of the founder of this Rite, upon the death of Jaeques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, Pierre d'Aumont, the Provincial Grand Master of Auvergne, with two Commanders and five Knights, retired for purposes of safety into Scotland, which place they reached disguised as Operative Masons, and there finding the Grand Commander, George Harris, and several Knights, they determined to continue the Order. Aumont was nominated Grand Master, at a Chapter held on St. John's Day, 1313. To avoid persecution, the Knights became Freemasons. In 1361, the Grand Master of the Temple removed his seat to Old Aberdeen, and from that time the Order united the veil of Freemasonry, spread rapidly through France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere. These events constituted the principal subject of many of the Degrees of the Rite of Strict Observance. The others were connected with alchemy, magic, and other superstitious practices. The great doctrine contended for by the followers of the Rite was, "that every true Freemason is a Knight Templar." For an account of the rise, the progress, the decay, and the final extinction of this once important Rite (see Hund, Baron son).

• STRICT TRIA

See Vouching

• STRIKING OFF

Striking off a Lodge from the Registry of the Grand Lodge is a phrase of English Freemasonry, equivalent to what in the United States of America is called a Forfeiture of Charter. It is now more commonly called Erasing from the List of Lodges.

• STUART MASONRY

This title is given by Masonic historians to that system of Freemasonry Which is supposed to have been invented by the adherents of the exiled House of Stuart for the purpose of being used as a political means of restoring, first, James II, and afterward his son and grandson, James and Charles Edward, respectively known in history as the Chevalier Saint George and the Young Pretender. Most of the conclusions to which Masonic writers have arrived on the subject of this connection of the Stuarts with the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry are based on conjecture; but in the opinion of Doctor Mackey there is sufficient internal evidence in the character of some of these Degrees, as well as in the known history of their organization, to establish the fact that such a connection did actually exist.

The first efforts to create a Masonic influence in behalf of his family is attributed to James II, who had abdicated the throne of England in 1688. Of him, Noorthouck says (Constitutions, 1784, page 192), that he was not "a Brother Mason," and sneeringly adds, in his index, that "he might have been a better King had he been a Mason." But Lenning says that after his flight to France, and during his residence at the Jesuit College of Clermont, where he remained for some time, his adherents, among whom were the Jesuits, fabricated certain Degrees with the ulterior design of carrying out their political views. At a later period these Degrees were, he says, incorporated into French Freemasonry under the name of the Clermont System, in reference to their original construction at that place. Gädicke had also said that many Scotchmen followed him, and thus introduced Freemasonry into France. But this opinion is only worthy of citation because it proves that such an opinion was current among the German scholars of the eighteenth century.

On his death, which took place at the Palace of St. Germain en Laye in 1701, he was succeeded in his claims to the British throne by his son, who was recognized by Louis XIV, of France, under the title of James III, but who is better known as the Chevalier Saint George, or the Old Preteruler. The word Pretender here should be given the understanding of claimant. He also sought, says Lenning, to find in the high Degrees of Freemasonry a support for his political views, but, as he remarks, with no better results than those which had attended the attempts of his father.

His son, Prince Charles Edward, who was commonly called by the English the Young Pretender, took a more active part than either his father or grandfather in the pursuits of Freemasonry; and there is abundant historical evidence that he was not only a Freemason, but that he held high office in the Order, and was for a time zealously engaged in its propagation; always, however, it is supposed, with political views.

In 1745 he invaded Scotland, with a view to regain the lost throne of his ancestors, and met for some time with more than partial success. On September 24, 1745, he was admitted into the Order of Knights' Templar, and was elected Grand Master, an office which it is said that he held until his death. On his return to France after his ill-fated expedition, the Prince is said to have established at the City of Arras, on April 151 1747, a Rose Croix Chapter under the title of Scottish Jacobite Chapter. In the Patent for this Chapter he styles himself "King of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland, and, as such, Substitute Grand Master of the Chapter of Herodem, known under the title of Knight of the Eagle and Peliean, and since our misfortunes and disasters under that of Rose Croix."

In 1748, the Rite of the Veille-Bru, or Faithful Scottish Masons, was created at Toulouse in grateful remembrance of the reception given by the Freemasons of that Orient to Sir Samuel Lockhart, the Aide-de-camp of the Pretender. Ragan says (Orthodoxie Maçonnique, page 122), in a note to this statement, the "favorites who accompanied this prince into France were in the habit of selling to speculators Charters for Mother Lodges, Patents for Chapters, etc. These titles were their property, and they did not fail to make use of them as a means of livelihood." Ragon says (Thuileur General, page 367), that the degrees of Irish Master, Perfect Irish Master, and Puissant Irish Master were invented in France, in 1747, by the favorites of Charles Edward Stuart and sold to the partisans of that Prince. One Degree was openly called the Scottish Master of the Sacree Vault of James VI, as if to indicate its Stuart character. The Degree still exists as the Thirteenth of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, but it has been shorn of its political pretensions and its title changed. Findell has given in his History of Freemasonry (English translation, page 209), a very calm and impartial account of the rise of this Stuart Freemasonry. He says: "Ever since the banishment of the Stuarts from England in 1688, secret alliances had been kept up between Rome and Scotland; for to the former place the Pretender James Stuart had retired in l719, and his son Charles Edward was born there in 1720; and these communications became the more intimate, the higher the hopes of the Pretender rose. The Jesuits played a very important part in these conferences. Regarding the reinstatement of the Stuarts and the extension of the power of the Roman church as identical, they sought, at that time, to make the society of Freemasons subservient to their ends. But to make use of the Fraternity to restore the exiled family to the throne could not possibly have been contemplated, as Freemasonry could hardly be said to exist in Scotland then.

Perhaps in 1724, when Ramsay was a year in Rome, or in 1728, when the Pretender in Parma kept up an intercourse with the restless Duke of Wharton, a Past Grand Master, this idea was first entertained; and then, when it was apparent how difficult it would be to corrupt the loyalty and fealty of Freemasonry in the Grand Lodge of Scotland, founded in 1736, this Scheme was set on foot, of assembling the faithful adherents of the banished royal family in the high Degrees! The soil which was best adapted for this innovation was France, where the low ebb to which Freemasonry had sunk had paved the way for all kinds of newfangled notions, and where the Lodges were composed of Scotch conspirators and accomplices of the Jesuits. When the path had thus been smoothed by the agency of these secret propagandists, Ramsay, at that time Grand Orator, an office unknown in England, by his speech completed the preliminaries necessary for the introduction of the high Degrees; their further development was left to the instrumentality of others, whose influence produced a result somewhat different from that originally intended. Their course we can now pursue, assisted by authentic historical information.

In 1752, Scottish Masonry, as it was denominated, penetrated into Germany, Berlin, prepared from a ritual very similar to one used in Lille in 1749 and 1750. In 1743, Thory tells us, the Masons in Lyons, under the name of the Petit Elu, or the Lesser Elect, invented the Degree of Kadosh, which represents the revenge of the Templars. The Order of Knights Templar had been abolished in 1311, and to that epoch they were obliged to have recourse when, after the banishment of several Knights from Malta in 1720 because they were Freemasons, it was not longer possible to keep up a connection with the Order of Saint John or Knights of Malta. then in the plenitude of their power under the sovereignty of the Pope. A pamphlet entitled Freemasonry Divested of all its Secrets published in Strasburg in 1745, contains the first glimpse of the Strict Observance, and demonstrates how much they expected the Brotherhood to contribute towards the expedition in favor of the Pretender."

From what has been said, it is evident there was a strong belief that the exiled House of Stuart exercised an important part in the invention and extension of what has been called the High Masonry. The traces of the political system are seen at the present day in the internal organization of some of the advanced Degrees especially in the derivation and meaning of certain significant words. There is, indeed, abundant reason for believing that the substitute word of the Third Degree was changed by Ramsay, or some other fabricator of Degrees, to give it a reference to James II as "the son of the widow," Queen Henrietta Maria. Further researches are needed to enable any author to Satisfactorily write all the details of this interesting episode in the history of Continental freemasonry. Documents are still wanting to elucidate certain intricate and, at present, apparently contradictory points. In the Jacobite Lodge at Rome, by Brother William James Hughan, the author states (page 25): "Many statements have appeared from time to time respecting Prince Charles Edward Stuart's connection with Freemasonry, documents being submitted to prove that he even held the highest possible rank in the craft; but so far as I have been able to discover, all such claims are of an apocryphal character. Some are most absurd, while others are directly opposed to the actual facts of the case."

This may be supplemented by what Brother George W. Speth states on page 27 of the same work where he advises students, "to put no trust whatever in amounts connecting the Stuarts with Freemasonry. We have, too, in the Young Pretender's own written and verbal statements that they are absolutely baseless, pure inventions." However, as Brother Robert Freke Gould tells us, some "have affirmed, and with perhaps the greater share of reason, that the Prince was compelled by altered circumstances of his cause to repudiate any relations with Freemasonry," and, of course, that gives another view of the matter, though it is curious that all through these years the tradition should have held its own with such remarkable tenacity.

• STUKELY, DOCTOR

In accordance with the Doctor's diary, he "was made a Mason, January 6, 1721, at the Salutation Tavern, Tavistock street, London, with Mr. Collins and Captain Rowe, who made the famous diving engine." The Doctor adds: "I was the first person in London made a free mason in that city for many years. We had great difficulty to find members enough to perform the ceremony. Immediately upon that it took a run, and ran itself out of breath through the folly of its members."

The Stukely papers containing the Doctor's diary are of continuous interest; and according to Rev. W. C. Lukis, P.M., F.lS.A., "Pain (or Payne) had been reelected Grand Master in 1720, and Doctor Desaguliers was the Immediate Past Grand Master." The last mentioned Brother pronouncing the Oration on June 24, 1721, at Stationers' Hall; on the following Saint John's Day (Evangelist), December 27, 1721, "We met at the Fountain Tavern, Strand, and by consent of the Grand Mr. present, Doctor Beal constituted a new Lodge, where I was chosen Mr."

A trite remark of Doctor Stukely as to symbolism, was: "The first learning of the world consisted chiefly of symbols, the wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients that have come to our hand, is symbolic"

Doctor Stukely has a curious reference in his diary, noted by Dudley Wright in England's Masonic Pioneers, page 114, to the Order of the Book. Whatever this Order may have been was not made clear but mentioned along with the Masonic activities of Doctor Stukely there is some interest for us in the items: 3rd Nov. 1722. The Duke of Wharton & Td. Dalkeith visited our Lodge at the Fountain.

7th Nov. 1722. Order of the book Instituted. 28th Dec. 1722. I dined with Ld. Hertford introduced by Ld. Winchelsea. I made them both members of the Order of the Book or Roman Knighthood.

• SUBLIME

The word is from the Latin Sublimis, meaning lofty, an allusion properly expressive of the teaching in the final symbolic ceremony of our ancient Craft. The Third Degree is called the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason, in reference to the exalted lessons that it teaches of God and of a future life. The epithet is, however, comparatively modern. It is not to be found in any of the rituals of the eighteenth century. Neither Hutchinson, nor Smith, nor Preston use it; and it was not, probably, in the original Prestonian lecture. Hutchinson speaks of "the most sacred and solemn Order" and of "the Exalted," but not of "the Sublime" Degree. Webb, who leased his lectures on the Prestonian system, applies no epithet to the Master's Degree. In an edition of the Constitutions, published at Dublin in 1769, the Master's Degree is spoken of as "the most respectable" and forty years ago the epithet "high and honorable" was used in some of the instructions of the United States.

The first book in which we meet with the adjective sublime applied to the Third Degree, is the Masonic Discourses of Dr. T. M. Harris, published at Boston in 1801. Cole also used it in 1817, in his Freemasons' Library; and about the same time Jeremy Cross, the well-known lecturer, introduced it into his teachings, and used it in his hieroglyphic Chart, which was, for many years, the text-book of American Lodges. The word is now, however, to be found in the modern English lectures, and is of universal use in the rituals of the United States, where the Third Degree is always called the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason. The word sublime was the password of the Master's Degree in the Adonhiramite Rite, because it was said to have been the surname of Hiram, or Adonhiram. On this subject, Guillemain, in his Recueil Précieux, or Choice Collection (i, page 91), makes the following singular remarks: "For a long time a great number of Masons were unacquainted with this worth and they erroneously made use of another in its stead which they did not understand, and to which they gave a meaning that was doubtful and improbable. This is proved by the fact that the first knights adopted for the Master's Password the Latin word Sublimis, which the French, as soon as they received Masonry, pronounced Sublime, which was so far very well. But some profanes, who were desirous of divulging our secrets, but who did not perfectly understand this word, wrote it sublime, which they said signified excellence. Others, who followed, surpassed the error of the first by printing it Giblos, and were bold enough to say that it was the name of the place where the body of Adonhiram was found. As in those days the number of uneducated was considerable, these ridiculous assertions were readily received, and the truth was generally forgotten."

The whole of this narrative is a mere visionary invention of the founder of the Adonhiramite system; but it is barely possible that there is some remote connection between the use of the word sublime in that Rite, as a Significant word of the Third Degree, and its modern employment as an epithet of the same Degree. However, the ordinary signification of the word, as referring to things of an exalted character, would alone sufficiently account for the use of the expression.

• STUDENTS AND LIBRARIANS, CONFERENCES OF

The Grand Lodge Commission in Edueation, Grand Lodge of Michigan, M. W. Frank Lodge, P. G. M., Chairman, held a discussion conference at Detroit, Mich., of Masonic students, authors, and Librarians, May 19-20, 1927, which was attended from Canada as well as from the United States. Bro. Douglas D. Martin, Editor of the Masonic News of Detroit, was in charge of the arrangement. Owing to its success this first conference was followed by others: 1928, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; 1929, Milwaukee, Wisc.; 1930, Philadelphia, Penn.; 1931, New York, N. Y.; 1932, Alexandria, Va.; 1933 Columbus, Ohio.

• SUBJECT-MATTER, AND MASONIC HISTORY

Subject-matter is itself a subject, profound and profoundly interesting, and it is hard to guess why philosophers, literary critics, art critics, and historians have so seldom analyzed and examined it. Just as any given building has its own particular material—brick, or stone, or lumber, or adobe, or concrete—so is each one of the arts and sciences composed of a "material" peculiarly its own. It is always a given sort or kind of subject-matter which calls an art or science into existence; conversely, each art or science is capable of dealing with its own subject matter and none other; and just as working in wood calls for tools designed for it—hammer, saw, axe, plane, etc.—so are the techniques of each art or science designed for dealing with its own special material. A landscape-painter may go about for weeks looking for a picture; he may see countless trees, hills, streams, mountains, waters, etc., but until he comes upon those natural objects in a very rare and a very special form (or composition) he has found no picture, and it is Pictures which are the subject-matter of his art.

A mathematician can tell what belongs and what does not belong to his own subject-matter—he sees at a glance, for example, the difference between the literary use of numbers ("Twelve guests came to dinner"), and the Mathematical use of numbers ("12 X 1 = 12"). so with the historian, who does not have the whole of the past for his subject-matter, as is popularly believed but only certain subjects in the past; and by a sweep of the eye, if he is trained for his profession, can separate historical themes out from the general matrix of past events, and sees what belongs to himself, and vs hat belongs to the chronicler, and to the biographer, and to the serologist, etc., and what is mere debris (or ana) which has no use, and is nothing but a mass of things in the past. What is the subject-matter of Masonic history? Even if an historian were omniscient, if he knew in detail each and every event or occurrence of the u hole past of the Whole world, but knew not the subject matter belonging to Freemasonry, he could not write a history of Freemasonry because Masonic history is nothing more than an account of the Masonic subject-matter, insofar as what it now contains is from the past.

He observes Freemasonry as it now is; he notes what "material" it is composed of, which means what its subject-matter is; and he tracks each component of that subject-matter back to its origin, and then gives an account of its progress from that tine to this; if he cannot discover what is Freemasonry's subject-matter, if he confuses it with the subject-matter belonging to other subjects, if he writes a history of a subject-matter which does not belong to Freemasonry, he is incompetent as a Masonic historian. It is as important for a Masonic historian to see what Freemasonry is not, as to see what it is, because between that is and that is not lies the boundary-line within which the subject-matter of Freemasonry is contained. Hundreds of Panasonic historical writings are worthless because their authors could not find, or else they ignored, that boundary line.

This absolute and inviolable principle of the subject matter in Freemasonry explains why no sufficiently competent Masonic historian can possible espouse the theory that freemasonry originated in one of the Ancient Mysteries, or in one of those forms of Medieval occultism which are represented by astrology, alchemy, mysticism, Rosierucianism, Kabbalism, magic, etc. If he has the learning he needs for his own purpose, he knows what subject-matter belonged to any one of those occultist circles; if he does, he knows that its subject-matter is world's apart from Freemasonry's subject-matter; to confuse the two is as deadly a solecism as to confuse the subject-matter of mathematics with the subject-matter of landscape painting. To prove that Freemasonry is not a disguised occultism it is not necessary to accumulate whole volumes of data or detail belonging to either; it is only necessary to contrast the subject-matter of any Medieval circle of occultism (alchemy would serve) with the subject-matter of the existing Fraternity. The differences are abysmic, and therefore cannot be bridged; the few points of similarity are superficial and are not even points of similarity, if that term be rigorously construed, but rather are points of analogy.

Any given subject-matter exists independently of a man. It is outside of him. It is one of the components of the world, and lies alongside the other components of it. No artist ever created the landscape which lies "out there" for him to paint.

No mathematician ever made mathematics. Chemicals were in the world long before any chemist was. History exists before the historian is born. Yet these subject matters are necessary to man, else he cannot have knowledge, arts, sciences, or things needed by him to remain in being, therefore one set of men must separate themselves out from among men in order to make one of those subject-matters his specialty. For this reason it may be said that the subject-matter calls the art or science into existence. Also, the subject-matter dictates to the artist, scientist, or other worker what tools he will employ, what means, what devices, what techniques. The arts, sciences, disciplines, systems of observations, subjects, and systems of thought which comprise culture were not invented by men, but are a slay man has of dealing with the world; the world itself is such as to make them necessary.

The subject-matter of Freemasonry consists of Ancient Craft Lodges and Grand Lodges, their ceremonies, rituals, officers, purposes, history, landmarks, customs, usages, and traditions, and of the High Grades which have their basis in it, and expand or elaborate it. A student, historian, interpreter, or analyst of Freemasonry is confined to this subject matter, and can employ only such techniques as the material in it caps for. He may be either a Mason, who knows his subject-matter at firsthand; or a non-Mason, who must take the word of Masons for what Masonry is. where a non-Mason refuses to accept that word he is ruled out of court by non-Masonic scholars and thinkers as well as by Masonic, because it is the first law of scholarship that a scholar must be true to his subject-matter. Many books which call themselves Masonic are not Masonic because they are a violation of that law; if non-Masonic books have much in them which is true about the subject-matter of Masonry, it is only because Masons themselves adjudge them to have it. A scholar in Masonry is one who knows and understands the whole of its subject-matter.

A number of the worthless books about Freemasonry would not have missed fire if only their authors had noted how many different themes are not in the subject-matter of Freemasonry. Certain of these omitted themes are what on a superficial view would be among the first to be expected in a ritual; their absence is therefore a fact of first importance; the theme omitted is as significant—and because it is omitted—as any of the themes included. It is striking that in Freemasonry, and more especially in the Ritual, such as the following are omitted:

1. There is next to nothing about women, or about children, or about the home. This theme is silently presupposed, but nowhere emerges into view. 2. Nature. The Ancient Mysteries originally were nature cults; some of them were fertility cults, and now and then one of them was a cult of death; but nature worship, or any nature cult, is almost completely absent from the Ritual. 3. Such occult things as smell or smack of magic charms, spells, horoscopes, zodiacs, witchcraft, demonology, satanism, exorcisms, ete., are as a theme conspicuous by its absence. At a few points there are faint references to them, or far-off echoes of them, but as a theme they are passed over. 4. Systematized and organized and established theologies and philosophies are absent. Pythagoras is alluded to, but as a geometrician, not as a philosopher (he is said to have coined that word).

5. The great theme of political government is missing. Such subjects as monarchy, republicanism, oligarchy, aristocracy, democracy, capitalism communism etc., are as old as the world, and as wide, but they do not emerge anywhere in the Ritual.

(A number of learned Masonic writers of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century would, if they were here to do it, question No. 2 above; they believed, or over and over again were tempted to believe, that Freemasonry was one of the Ancient Mysteries which had somehow, and by a miracle, survived out of the Ancient World. It would now be necessary to ask them, Which Ancient Mystery? It is no longer possible to lump them together, as if they had somehow been versions of one thing, because archeology has proved beyond question that Ancient Mysteries differed radically among themselves, and as much as Christianity differs from Judaism, and as either differs from Mohammedanism; moreover, a given Mystery Cult was antithetic to any other; they were foes of each other; and it would have been impossible for Freemasonry to descend from all of them; if not, from which one did it descend? If it descended from any one, why has that Mystery Cult disappeared out of the Ritual? Why do we nowhere encounter it in either fact or name? Why is not it in the subject matter of Masonry?).

• SUBLIME

• SUBLIME DEGREES

The eleven Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from the Fourth to the Fourteenth inclusive, are so called. Thus Dalcho (Report of Committee, 1802) says: "Although many of the Sublime Degrees are in fact a continuation of the Blue Degrees, yet there is no interference between the two bodies."

• SUBLIME GRAND LODGE

A title formerly given in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite to what is now simply called a Lodge of Perfection. Thus, in 1801, Doctor Dalcho delivered in Charleston, South Carolina, an address which bears the title of An Oration delivered in the Sublime Grand Lodge.

• SUBLIME KNIGHT ELECTED

The French expression is Sublime Chevalier élu. Called also Sublime Knight Elected of the twelve. The Eleventh Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Its legend is that it was instituted by King Solomon after punishment had been inflicted on certain traitors at the Temple, both as a recompense for the zeal and constancy of the Illustrious Elect of Fifteen, who had discovered them, and also to enable him to elevate other deserving Brethren from the lower Degrees to that which had been vacated by their promotion. Twelve of these fifteen he elected Sublime Knights, and made the selection by ballot, that he might give none offense, putting the names of the whole in an urn.

The first twelve that were drawn he formed into a Chapter, and gave them command over the Twelve Tribes, bestowing on them a name which in Hebrew signifies a true man.

The meeting of a Body of Sublime Knights is called a Chapter.

The room is hung with black strewed with tears.

The presiding officer represents King Solomon, and in the old instructions is styled Most Puissant, but in recent ones Thrice Illustrious. The apron is white, lined and bordered with black, with black strings; on the flap a flaming heart.

The sash is blael;, with a flaming heart on the breast, suspended from the right shoulder to the left hip.

The jewel is a sword of justice.

This is the last of the three Flus which are found in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. In the French Rite they have been condensed into one, and make the Fourth Degree of that ritual, but not, as Ragon admits, with the happiest effect.

All the names of the Twelve Illustrious Knights selected to preside over the Twelve Tribes, as they have been transmitted to us in the ritual of this Degree, have undoubtedly assumed a very corrupted form. The restoration of their correct orthography and with it their true signification, is worthy the attention of the Masonic student.

• SUBLIME MASONS

The initiates into the Fourteenth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite are so called. Thus Dalcho in his Oration (page 27) says: "The Sublime Masons view the symbolic system with reverence, as forming a test of the character and capacity of the initiated " This abbreviated form is now seldom used, the fuller one of Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Masons being more generally employed.

• SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET

This is the Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. There is abundant internal evidence, derived from the ritual and from some historical facts, that the Degree of Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret was instituted by the founders of the Council of Emperors of the East and West, which Body was established in the year 1758. It is certain that before that period we hear nothing of such a Degree in any of the Rites. The Rite of Heredom or of Perfection, which was that instituted by the Council of Emperors, consisted of twenty-five Degrees. Of these the Twenty-fifth, and highest, was the Prince of the Royal Secret. It was brought to America by Morin, as the summit of the High Masonry which he introduced, and for the propagation of which he had received his Patent. In the subsequent extension of the Scottish Rite about the beginning of the nineteenth century, by the addition of eight new Degrees to the original twenty-five, the Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret became the Thirty-second. Bodies of the Thirty-second Degree are called Consistories, and where there is a superintending Body erected by the Supreme Council for the government of the inferior Degrees in a State or Provence, it is called a Grand Consistory.

The clothing of a Sublime Prince consists of a collar, jewel, and apron. The collar is black edged with white.

The jewel is a Teutonic cross of gold.

The apron is white edged with black. On the flap are embroidered six flags, three on each side the staffs in saltier, and the flags blue, red, and yellow. On the center of the flap, over these, is a Teutonic cross surmounted by an All-seeing Eye, and on the cross a double-headed eagle not crowned. On the body of the apron is the tracing-board of the Decree.

The most important part of the symbolism of the Degree is the tracing-board, which is technically called the Camp. This is a symbol of deep import, and in its true interpretation is found that "Royal Secret" from which the Degree derives its name. This Camp constitutes an essential part of the furniture of a Consistory during an initiation, but its explanations are altogether esoteric It is a singular fact, that notwithstanding the changes which the Degree must have undergone in being transferred from the Twenty-fifth of one Rite to the Thirty-second of another, no alteration was ever made in the Camp, which retains at the present day the same form and Signification that were originally given to it.

The motto of the Degree is Spes mea in Deo est. that is, My hope is in God.

• SUBLIME SOLOMON

The French name is Salomon Sublime. A Degree in the manuscript collection of Peuvret.

• SUBLIMES, THE

The French name is Les Sublimes One of the Degrees of the Ancient Chapter of Clermont.

• SUBMISSION

Submission to the mediatorial offices of his Brethren in the ease of a dispute is a virtue recommended to the Freemason, but not necessarily to be enforced. In the Charges of a Freemason (Constitutions, 1723, page 56, vi, 6) it is said: "'With respect to Brothers or Fellows at law, the Master and Brethren should kindly offer their mediation; which ought to be thankfully submitted to by the contending Brethren; and if that submission is impracticable, they must, however, carry on their process or lawsuit without wrath or rancor."

• SUBORDINATE LODGE

So called to indicate its subordination to the Grand Lodge as a supreme, superintending power (see Lodge).

• SUBORDINATE OFFICERS

In a Grand Lodge, all the officers below the Grand Master, and in a Lodge, all those below the Worshipful Master, are styled Subordinate Officers. So, too, in all the other branches of the Order, the presiding officer is supreme, the rest subordinate.

• SUBORDINATION

Although it is the theory of Freemasonry that all the Brethren are on a level of equality, yet in the practical working of the Institution a subordination of rank has been always rigorously observed. So the Charges approved in 1722, which had been collected by Anderson from the Old Constitutions, say: "These rulers and governors, supreme and subordinate, of the ancient Lodge, are to be obeyed in their respective stations by all the Brethren, according to the Old Charges and Regulations, with all humility, reverence, love, and alacrity" (Constitutions, 1723, page 52).

• SUBSTITUTE

• SUBSTITUTE ARK

See Ark, Substitute.

• SUBSTITUTE CANDIDATE

An arrangement resorted to in the Royal Arch Degree of the American system, so as to comply preform, as a matter of form, with the requisitions of the ritual. In the English, Scotch, and Irish systems, there is no regulation requiring the presence of three candidates, and, therefore, the practice of employing substitutes is unknown in those countries. In the United States the usage has prevailed from a very early period, although opposed at various times by conscientious Companions, who thought that it was an improper evasion of the law. Finally, the question as to the employment of substitutes came before the General Grand Chapter in September, 1872, when it was decided, by a vote of ninety-one to thirty, that the use of substitutes is not in violation of the ritual of Royal Arch Masonry or the installation charges delivered to a High Priest.

The use of them was therefore authorized, but the Chapters were exhorted not to have recourse to them except in cases of emergency; an unnecessary exhortation, it would seem, since it was only in such eases that they had been employed.

• SUBSTITUTE GRAND MASTER

The third officer in the Grand Lodge of Scotland. He presides over the Craft in the absence of the Grand and Deputy Grand Masters. The office was created in the year 1738, He is appointed by the Grand Master annually.

• SUBSTITUTE WORD

This is an expression of very significant suggestion to the thoughtful Master Mason. If the Word is, in Freemasonry, a symbol of Divine Truth; if the search for the Word is a symbol of the search for that Truth; if the Lost Word symbolizes the idea that Divine Truth has not been found, then the Substitute Word is a symbol of the unsuccessful search after Divine Truth and the attainment in this life, of which the first Temple is a type, of what is only an approximation to it. The idea of a substitute word and its history is to be found in the oldest rituals of the eighteenth century; but the phrase itself is of more recent date, being the result of the fuller development of Masonic science and philosophy.

The history of the Substitute Word has been an unfortunate one. Subjected from a very early period to a mutilation of form, it underwent an entire change in some Rites, after the introduction of the high Degrees; most probably through the influence of the Stuart Masons, who sought by an entirely new word to give a reference to the unfortunate representative of that house as the similitude of the stricken builder. And so it has come to pass that there are now two substitutes in use, of entirely different form and meaning; one used on the Continent of Europe, and one in England and the United States. It is difficult in this case, where almost all the knowledge that we can have of the subject is so scanty, to determine the exact time when or the way in which the new word was introduced But there is, as Doctor Mackey believed, abundant internal evidence in the words themselves as to their appropriateness and the languages whence they came the one being pure Hebrew, and the other, in Brother Mackey's opinion, Gaelic, as well as from the testimony of old rituals, to show that the word in use in the United States is the true word, and was the one in use before the Revival. Both of these words have, however, unfortunately been translated by persons ignorant of the languages whence they are derived, so that the most incorrect and even absurd interpretations of their significations have been given. The word in universal use in the United States has been translated as rottenness in the bone, or the builder is dead, or by several other phrases equally as far from the true meaning.

The correct word has been mutilated Properly, it consists of four syllables, for the last syllable, as it is now pronounced, should be divided into two. These four syllables compose three Hebrew words, which constitute a perfect and grammatical phrase, appropriate to the occasion of their utterance. But to understand them, the scholar must seek the meaning in each syllable, and combine the whole. In the language of Apuleius, we must forbear to enlarge upon these holy mysteries

• SUCCESSION TO THE CHAIR

The regulations adopted in 1721 by the Grand Lodge of England have been generally esteemed as setting forth the ancient landmarks of the Order But certain regulations, which were adopted on the 25th of November, 1723, as amendments to or explanatory of these, being enacted under the same authority, and almost by the same persons, can scarcely be less binding upon the Order than the original regulations. Both these compilations of Masonic law refer expressly to the subject of the succession to the chair on the death or removal of the Master.

The old regulation of 1721, in the second of the thirty-nine articles adopted in that year, is in the following words (Constitutions, 1738, page I53): "In ease of death or sickness, or necessary absence of the Master, the Senior Warden shall act as Master pro tempore, if no Brother is present who has been Master of that Lodge before. For the absent Master's authority reverts to the last Master present, though he cannot act till the Senior Warden has congregated the Lodge." The words in italics indicate that even at that time the power of calling the Brethren together and setting them to work, which is technically called congregating the Lodge, was supposed to be vested in the Senior Warden alone during the absence of the Master; although, perhaps, from a supposition that he had greater experience, the difficult duty of presiding over the Communication was entrusted to a Past Master. The regulation is, however, contradictory in its provisions. For if the last Master present could not act, that is, could not exercise the authority of the Master until the Senior Warden had congregated the Lodge, then it is evident that the authority of the Master did not revert to him in an unqualified sense, for that officer required no such concert nor consent on the part of the Warden, but could congregate the Lodge himself.

This evident contradiction in the language of the regulation probably caused, in a brief period, a further examination of the ancient usage, and accordingly on the 25th of November,1723, a very little more than two years after, the following regulation (see above Constitutions) was adopted: "If a Master of a particular Lodge is deposed or dimits, the Senior Warden shall forthwith fill the Master's chair till the next time of choosing; and ever Since, in the Master's absence, he fills the chair, even though a former Master be present." The present Constitution of the Grand Lodge of England appears, however, to have been formed rather in reference to the regulation of 1721 than to that of 1723. It prescribes (Rule 141) that on the death, removal, or incapacity of the Master, the Senior Warden, or in his absence, the Junior Warden, or in his absence, the immediate Past Master, or in his absence, the Senior Past Master, "shall act as Master in summoning the Lodge, until the next installation of Master."

But the English Constitution goes on to direct that, "in the Master's absence, the immediate Past Master, or if he be absent, the Senior Past Master of the Lodge present shall talce the chair. And if no Past Master of the Lodge be present, then the Senior Warden, or in his absence the Junior Warden, shall rule the Lodge."

Here again we find ourselves involved in the intricacies of a divided sovereignty. The Senior Warden congregates the Lodge, but a Past Master rules it. And ii the Warden refuses to perform his part of the duty, then the Past Master will have no Lodge to rule. So that, after all, it appears that of the two the authority of the Senior Warden is the greater. But in the United States the usage has always conformed to the regulation of 1723, as is apparent from a glance at the rituals and monitorial works. Webb, in his Freemasons Monitor (edition of 1808), lays down the rule, that "in the absence of the Master, the Senior Warden is to govern the Lodge" and that officer receives annually, in every Lodge in the United States, on the night of his installation, a Charge to that effect. It must be remembered, too, that we are not indebted to Webb himself for this charge, but that he burrowed it, word for word, from Preston, who wrote long before, and who, in his turn, extracted it from the rituals which were in force at the time of his writing. In the United States, accordingly, it has been held, that on the death or removal of the Master, his authority descends to the Senior Warden, who may, however, by courtesy, offer the chair to a Past Master present, after the Lodge has been congregated.

There is some confusion in relation to the question of who is to be the successor of the Master, which arises partly from the contradiction between the regulations of 1791 and 1723, and partly from the contradiction in different clauses of the regulation of 1723 itself. But whether the Senior Warden or a Past Master is to succeed, the regulation of 1721 makes no provision for an election, but implies that the vacancy shall be temporarily supplied during the official term, while that of 1723 expressly states that such temporary succession shall continue "till the next time of choosing," or, in the words of the present English Constitution, "until the next installation of Master." But, in addition to the authority of the ancient regulation and general and uniform usage, reason and justice seem to require that the vacancy shall not be supplied permanently until the regular time of election. By holding the election at an earlier period, the Senior Warden is deprived of his right as a member to become a candidate for the vacant office. For the Senior Warden having been regularly installed, has of course been duly obligated to serve in the office to which he had been elected during the full term. If the an election takes place before the expiration of that term, he must be excluded from the list of candidates, because, if elected, he could not vacate his present office without a violation of his Obligation.

The same disability would affect the Junior Warden, who by a similar obligation is bound to the faithful discharge of his duties in the South. So that by anticipating the election in the Lodge, the two most prominent officers and the two most likely to succeed the Master in due course of rotation, would be excluded from the Chance of promotion. A grievous wrong would thus be done to these officers, which no Dispensation of a Grand Master should be permitted to inflict.

But even if the Wardens were not ambitious of office, or users not likely, under any circumstances, to be elected to the vacant office, another objection arises to the anticipation of an election for Master which is worthy of consideration.

The Wardens, having been installed under the solemnity of an obligation to discharge the duties of their respective offices to the best of their ability, and the Senior Warden having been expressly Charged that '; the absence of the Master he is to rule the Lodge, " a conscientious Senior Warden might very naturally feel that he was neglecting these duties and violating this obligation, by permitting the office which he has sworn to temporarily occupy in the absence of his Master to be permanently filled by any other person. On the whole, then, the old regulations, as well as ancient. uninterrupted, and uniform usage and the principles of reason and justice, seem imperatively to requite that, on the death or removal of the Master, the chair shalt be occupied temporarily until the regular time of election. Although the law is not actually explicit in relation to the person who shall fill that temporary position, the weight of law and precedent seems to incline toward the principle that the authority of the absent Master shall be placed in the hands of the Senior warden.

• SUCCOTH

An ancient city of Palestine, about forty-five miles northeast of Jerusalem, and the site of which is now occupied by the village of Seikoot. lt is the place near which Hiram Abif cast the sacred vessels for the temple (see Clay Ground).

• SUFFERER

In French, Souffrant. The Second Degree of the Order of Initiated Knights and Brothers of Asia.

• SUGER, THE ABBOT

Though he held the title of Abbot, Suger was scarcely to be called a monk but like so many prelates in his period, and because almost the only means for an education were controlled by the church, was a statesman and public leader. He was Abbot at St. Denis, Paris, from 1122 to 1151. He was acting king while Louis VII was away in the East on one of the Crusades. He was one of the few Medieval men to write an autobiography, and if only others had done as he did, and as John of Salisbury did, Medieval history would be less "medieval" than it is. Suger's great fame, however, rests on his epoch-making achievement as a builder, for it was he who raised the funds, created the administration, and superintended the design and construction of the Abbey Church of St. Denis, at about 1140.

In his great Medieval Architecture (2 Vol.) Arthur Kingsley Porter, and after a life-time of studying buildings and records on the spot, declares this Abbey Church to have been the first Gothic building, properly so called. Porter argues, with an overwhelming weight of sound evidence and reasoning to support him, that the Gothic Style was in essence or principle not a mere bringing into one structure of a number of separate elements which had been discovered here and there, first one and then another, but was a single formula; a coherent, integrated system of principles, each implying the other, understandable only to an architect who grasped the formula as a unit, not understandable piecemeal. In that, it was comparable to the aero-dynamic principle which, once Wilbur Fright had discovered it, enables engineers to design airplanes of any desired type or size. (See works by Lethaby. See also pages 254 ff. in The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, by Haskins; Art and the Reformation, by Coulton; Gothic Architecture in England, by Francis Bond; works of Rivoira.)

It is accepted as proved that Speculative Freemasonry originated in Medieval Operative Masonry, but that broad fact does not answer the specific question as to how or where or when the peculiar and particular Fraternity of Speculative Freemasons originated.

Architecture did not turn itself into Speculative Freemasonry, for it continues everywhere now as it did in the Middle Ages. Nor was Speculative Freemasonry the only special society or fraternity to originate in Medieval architecture; the present Society of Operative Masons did, so did the German Steinmetzen, so did a branch of the French Compagnonnage, so did the City Companies of Masons, etc. Freemasonry, with its unique philosophy which belongs to itself alone, must have had a special origin all its own at some particular time and place in Medieval architecture—not from architecture in general, but from some special development within architecture. The most reasonable answer to the question is that the Freemasonry which was to continue into our modern Lodges, originated among the Gothic cathedral-building Freemasons. If that be so, there is history as well as poetry in looking back to the Abbot Suger and his Church at St. Denis as a principal source of origin. In any event, the year 1140 is a landmark in the chronicles of Freemasonry.

This church or abbey, was in reality more than church or abbey because it was so much more than any abbey could be, since within its walls regiments of cavalry could camp, and in its rooms and adjacent buildings the King Louis Le Gros was so often present with his court that the abbey was in reality capital of France. Nothing could be wider of the facts than the tediously and tirelessly repeated notion that the Gothic, and with it Freemasonry, was "very simple" and "very crude" in its beginnings; for Gothic began in its very first building full-formed and marvelous at the center of Europe, within the walls around which Paris was to grow, and with a structure that struck as much awe in Europe as if it had been a great miracle.

The man who supervised it was the King of France's first minister; its builders were his colleagues; its designers were the elite of Europe. (Fortunately, more is known about Suger than about any other of the great Masters of Masons down to Inigo Jones and Wren: see The Middle Ages, by Fr. Funck-Brentano; Wm. Heinemann, Ltd.; London; 1922; ch. VI. T'ie de Louis we Gros, by Suger. Louis VI le Gros, by A. Luchaire. The Developxnent of the French Monarchy, by Thompson. Abt. Suger son Saint-Denis, by Cartellieri.)

• SULLIVAN, JOHN

General under Washington in the Revolutionary War. Born February 18, 1740, died January 23, 1795. Lawyer by profession, delegate to Continental Congress, 1774, also in 1780; attorney general of New Hampshire, 1782; state president. 1786; United States District Judge, 1789 received thanks of Congress for military service', 1779. He was Raised in 1767, in Saint John's Lodge, Bortsmouth, New Hampshire; was Master of this Lodge subsequently and elected Grand Master of Freemasons of New Hampshire in 1789, and reelected in l790 (see New age, February, 1924; Doctor Mackey's History of Freemasonry, 1921, page 1587).

• SULLIVAN, SIR ARTHUR SEYMOUR

An English composer and Freemason. Born May 13 1842, in Condone and died November 22, 1900, in the same city. brother Sullivan studied in the London Royal Academy of Music and the Leipsig Conservatory; was Professor of Composition at the Academy in 1861; and Director of the National Training School for Music in London in 1876. His operas and songs brought him great and enduring fame. In 1887 Sir Artur Sullivan served the Masonic Fraternity as Grand Organist of- the Grand Lodge of England (see Freemasons Calendar and Pocket Companion, 1888, pages 97 and l00).

• SUMMONS

A warning to appear at the meeting of a Lodge or other Masonic body. The custom of summoning the members of a Lodge to every Communication, although now often neglected, is of very ancient Aaron and was generally observed up to a very recent period. In the Anderson Charges of 1722 (Constitutions 1723, page 51) it is said: "In ancient times, no Master or Fellows could be absent from the Lodge, especially when warned to appear at it, without incurring a severe censure." In the Constitutions of the Cooke Manuscript (line 902) about l450), we are told that the Masters and Fellows were to be forewarned to come to the congregations.

All the old records, and the testimony of writers since the revival, show that it was always the usage to summon the members to attend the meetings of the General Assignably or the particular Lodges. A summons of a dodge is often improperly or illegally worded and care should be taken when issued.

• SUN

Hardly any of the symbols of Freemasonry are more important in their signification or more extensive in their application than the sun. As the source of material light, it reminds the Freemason of that intellectual light of which he is in constant search. But it is especially as the ruler of the day, giving to it a beginning and end, and a regular course of hours, that the Sun is presented as a Masonic Symbol. Hence, of the three lesser lights, we are told that one represents or symbolizes the sun, one the moon, and one the Master of the Lodge, because, as the sun rules the day and the moon governs the night, so should the Worshipful Master rule and govern his Lodge with equal regularity and precision.

And this is in strict analogy with other Masonic symbolisms. For if the Lodge is a symbol of the world, which is thus governed in its changes of times and seasons by the sun, it is evident that the Master who governs the Lodge, controlling its time of opening and closing, and the work which it should do, must be symbolized by the sun. The heraldic definition of the sun as a bearing fits most appositely to the symbolism of the sovereignty of the Master. Thus Gwillim Says: "The sun is the symbol of sovereignty, the hieroglyphic of royalty; it doth signify absolute authority!'

This representation of the sun as a symbol of authority while it explains the reference to the Master, enables us to amplify its meaning, and apply it to the three Sources of authority in the Lodge, and accounts for the respective positions of the officers wielding this authority. the Master, therefore, in the East is a symbol of the rising sun; the Junior Warden in the South, of the Meridian Sun; and the Senior Warden in the West, of the Setting Sun. So in the Mysteries of India, the chief officers were placed in the East, the West, and the South, respectively, and thus represent Brahma, or the rising; Vishnu, or the setting; and Siva, or the meridian sun. And in the Druidical Rites, the Archdruid, seated in the East, was assisted by two other officers—the one in the West representing the moon, and the other in the South representing the meridian sun.

This triple division of the government of a Lodge by three officers, representatives of the sun in his three manifestations in the East, South and West, will remind us of similar ideas in the symbolism of antiquity. In the Orphic Mysteries, it was taught that the sun generated from an egg, burst forth with power to triplicate himself by his own unassisted energy. Supreme power seems always to have been associated in the ancient mind with a three-fold division. Thus the sign of authority was indicated by the three-forked lightning of Jove, the trident of Neptune, and the three-headed Cerherus of Pluto. The government of the Universe was divided between these three sons of Saturn. The chaste goddess ruled the earth as Diana, the heavens as Luna, and the infernal regions as Hecate, whence her rites were only performed in a place where three roads met. The sun is then presented to us in Freemasonry first as a symbol of light, but then more emphatically as a symbol of sovereign authority.

But, says Wemyss (Symbolic Language), speaking of Seriptural symbolism, "the sun may be considered to be an emblem of Divine Truth," because the sun or light, of which it is the source, "is not only manifest in itself, but makes other things; so one truth detects, reveals, and manifests another, as all truths are dependent on, and connected with, each other more or less." And this again is applicable to the Masonic doctrine which makes the Master the symbol of the sun; for as the sun discloses and makes manifest, by the opening of day, what had been hidden in the darkness of night, so the Master of the Lodge, as analogue of the ancient hierophant or explainer of the mysteries, makes Divine Truth manifest to the neophyte, who had been hitherto in intellectual darkness, and reveals the hidden or esoteric lessons of initiation.

• SUN, KNIGHT OF THE

See Knight of the Sun

• SUN, MOON, AND STARS

The plates prefixed to the Hieroglyphic Chart of Brother Jeremy Cross contain a page on which are delineated a sun, moon, seven stars, and a comet, which has been copied into the later illustrated editions of Webb's Monitor, and is now to be found in all the modern Masters' Carpets. In the connection in which they are there placed they have no symbolic meaning, although many have erroneously considered that they have.

The sun and moon are not symbols in the Third, but only in the First Degree; the stars are a Symbol in the advanced Degrees, and the comet is no symbol at all. They are simply mnemonic, helps to the memory, in character, and intended to impress on the mind, by a pictured representation of the object, a passage in the Webb lectures taken from the Prestonian, which is in these words: "The All-seeing Eye, whom the sun, moon, and stars obey, and under whose watchful care even comets perform their stupendous revolutions, pervades the inmost recesses of the human heart and will reward us according to our merits " Doctor Mackey held that it would have been more creditable to the Symbolic learning of Cross, if he had omitted these plates from his collection of Masonic symbols. At least the too common error of mistaking them for Symbols in the Third Degree would have been avoided.

• SUN OF MERCY, SOCIETY OF THE

Of this Society little is known, but Antoine Joseph Pernetty, the presumed author of the Twenty-eighth Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, became a devotee to it, and induced Swedenborg to become a member. Its central point appears to have been Avignon and Montpellier; and its nature Hermetic.

• SUNDAY SCHOOLS

That the Masonic Fraternity was active in the introduction and support of Sunday Schools for the instruction of those unable to read the Bible is shown by the action taken by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1815. At the adjourned Quarterly Communication on March 20 of that year, the Minutes tell us: The R. W. Grand Master having made an Address on the Importance of the establishment of a School for Teaching unlearned Adults to read the Holy Scriptures, It was On Motion made and Seconded. Resolved, That the Grand Officers and Four other Members of this Grand Lodge, to be appointed by the Grand Master, be a Committee, to establish in any Apartment or Apartments of the Building, Excepting the Grand Lodge room, a Sunday School for teaching unlearned Adults to read the Holy Scripture without Note or commentary, the Funds, if any should be found necessary, to be raised by Voluntary subscriptions among the Fraternity or other Benevolently disposed persons and that said Committee immediately take the necessary steps to carry this resolution into effect.

The R. W. Grand Master was pleased to appoint the following Brethren to compose, in conjunction with the Grand Officers, the above mentioned Committee, to wit: Andrew M. Prevost, Peter A. Browne, Samuel Lippineott, T. and Thomas Entrikin.

Further action upon the Sunday School was taken at the Quarterly Communication of June 5, 1815, as follows:

On Motion made and Seconded Resolved, That the W. Master and the Wardens of the Lodges held in the City be a Committee to search for and Introduce Scholars into the Adult School.

The importance of the undertaking to the Brethren is seen in the resolution, providing for a numerous Committee to handle the affairs of the School for Adults, adopted at the Grand General Communication held on December 27, 1815: Resolved, That the Grand Officers and 17 Members of the Grand Lodge, (to be appointed by the R. W. Grand Master in the recess of the Grand Lodge,) be a Committee to Conduct the Adult School.

At the Adjourned Grand Extra Communication of January 30, 1816, we find that: Sundry Resolutions respecting the Adult Seheol were offered and read, and Ordered to lay on the Table till the next night of meeting. Accordingly, at the Communication held on February 5, 1816, we learn that: The Resolutions Offered at the last Meeting respecting he Adult School were taken into (consideration, Amended and Adopted as follows, to wit:

Resolved, the Masonic Adult School established by the Grand Lodge is a beneficial Institution and merits the Encouragement of the Grand Lodge. Resolved, that the School may be allowed the Use of the different Apartments of the Masonic Hall under the Authority of the Grand Lodge on the Sabbath Day, so soon as Insurance can be effected against the Fisk incurred thereby, the Grand Lodge and Arch Rooms excepted Provided that the same is maintained without any Expense or responsibility whatever, mediate or immediate to the Grand Lodge. Resoled that it be recommended to the Brethren in the Order of Masonry, friendly to the Adult School, to Associate themselves for the maintenance of the same by voluntary Contribution. Resolved, that a Committee of Three be appointed to carry the last Resolution into effect.. The R. W. Grand Master was pleased to Appoint Brothers Samuel F. Bradford, Josiah Randall and John W. Peter, the Committee for the above purpose.

Brother F. C. Turner (Builder, November, 1922, page 355) quotes a letter written in 1815 by Miss S. Witehead, Philadelphia, to Davie Bethune, New York, saying that the Grand Lodge would conduct schools on Chestnut Street, that the Fraternity would extend the work over the entire Union, as she had been informed by one of the officers.

• SUN-WORSHIP

Sir William Jones has remarked that two of the principal sources of mythology were a wild admiration of the heavenly bodies, particularly the sun, and an inordinate respect paid to the memory of powerful, wise, and virtuous ancestors, especially the founders of kingdoms, legislators, and warriors. To the latter cause we may attribute the euhemerism of the Greeks and the Shintoism of the Chinese. But in the former we shall find the origin of sun-worship the oldest and by far the most prevalent of all the ancient religions. Eusebius says that the Phoenicians and Egyptians were the first who ascribed divinity to the sun. But long—very long—before these ancient peoples the primeval race of Aryans worshiped the solar orb in his various manifestations as the producer of light. "In the Veda," says a native commentator, "there are only three deities: Surya in heaven, Indra in the sky, and Agni on the earth." But Surya, Indra, Agni are but manifestations of God in the sun, the bright sky, and the fire derived from the solar light. In the profoundly poetic ideas of the Vedic hymns we find perpetual allusion to the sun with his life bestowing rays. Everywhere in the East, amidst its brilliant skies, the sun claimed, as the glorious manifestation of Deity, the adoration of those primitive peoples. The Persians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans —all worshiped the sun. The Greeks, a more intellectual people, gave a poetic form to the grosser idea, and adored Apollo or Dionysus as the sun-god.

Sun-worship was introduced into the mysteries not as a material idolatry, but as the means of expressing an idea of restoration to life from death, drawn from the daily reappearance in the east of the solar orb after its nightly disappearance in the west. To the sun, too, as the regenerator or revivifier of all things, is the Phallic Worship, which made a prominent part of the Mysteries, to be attributed. From the Mithraic initiations in which sun-worship played so important a part, the Gnosties derived many of their symbols. These, again, exercised their influence upon the Medieval Freemasons. Thus it is that the sun has become so prominent in the Masonic system; not, of course, as an object of worship, but purely as a symbol, the interpretation of which presents itself in many different ways (see Sun).

• SUPER-EXCELLENT MASONS

Doctor Oliver devotes the fifteenth lecture of his Historical Landmarks (volume I, pages 401 to 438) to an essay "On the number and classification of the Workmen at the building of King Solomon's Temple." His statement, based entirely on old lectures and legends, is that there were nine Freemasons of supereminent ability who were called Super-excellent Masons, and who presided over as many Lodges of Excellent Masons, while the nine Super-Excellent Masons formed also a Lodge over which Tito Zadok, Prince of Harodim, presided. In a note on page 423, Brother Oliver refers to these Super-Excellent Masons as being the same as the Most Excellent Masters who constitute the Sixth Degree of the American Rite. The theory advanced by Doctor Oliver is not only entire unauthenticated by historical evidence of any kind, but also inconsistent with the ritual of that Degree. It is, in fact, merely a myth, and not a well-constructed one.

• SUPER-EXCELLENT MASTER

A Degree which was originally an honorary or side Degree conferred by the Inspectors-General of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite at Charleston. It has since been introduced into some of the Royal and Select Councils of the United States, and there conferred as an additional Degree. This innovation on the regular series of Cryptic Degrees, with which it actually has no historical connection, met with great opposition; so that the Convention of Royal and Select Masters which met at New York in June, 1873, resolved to place it in the category of an honorary Degree, which might or might not be conferred at the option of a Council, but not as an integral part of the Rite. Although this Body had no dogmatic authority, its decision has doubtless had some influence in settling the question. The Degree is simply an enlargement of that part of the ceremonies of the Royal Arch which refer to the Temple destruction. To that place it belongs, if it belongs anywhere, but has no more to do with the ideas inculcated in Cryptic Masonry, than have any of the Degrees lately invented for modern Secret Societies.

Whence the Degree originally sprang, it is impossible to tell. It could hardly have had its birth on the Continent of Europe; at least, it does not appear to have been known to European writers. Neither Gadicke nor Lenning mention it in their Encyclopedias, nor is it found in the catalogue of more than seven hundred Degrees given by Thory in his Acta Latomorum; nor does Ragon allude to it in his Tuileur Général, although he has there given a list of one hundred and fifty-three Degrees or modifications of the Master. Doctor Oliver, it is true, speaks of it, but he evidently derived his knowledge from an American source. It may have been manufactured in America, and possibly by some of those engaged in founding the Scottish Rite. The only Cahier that Doctor Mackey ever saw of the original ritual, which remained in his possession, is in the handwriting of Alexander McDonald, a very intelligent and enthusiastic Freemason, who was at one time the Grand Commander of the supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction.

The Masonic legend of the degree of ,super Excellent Master refers to circumstances which occurred on the last day of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuzaradan, the Captain of the Chaldean Army, who had been sent by Nebuchadnezar to destroy the city and Temple, as a just punishment for the Jewish King Zedekiah for his perfidy and rebellion.

It occupies, therefore, precisely that point of time which is embraced in that part of the Royal Arch Degree which represents the destruction of the Temple, and the Carrying of the Jews in captivity to Babylon. It is, in fact, an exemplification and extension of that part of the Royal Arch Degree. As to the symbolic design of the Degree, it is very evident that its legend and ceremonies are intended to inculcate that important Masonic virtue—fidelity to vows. Zedekiah, the wicked King of Judah, is, by the modern ritualists who have symbolized the degree, adopted very appropriately as the symbol of perfidy. The severe but well-deserved punishment which was inflicted on him by the King of Bahylon is set forth in the lecture as a great moral lesson, whose object is to warn the recipient of the fatal effects that will ensue from a violation of his sacred obligations.

• SUPERINTENDENT OF WORKS, GRAND

An officer of the Grand Lodge of England, who is appointed annually by the grants Master. He should be well skilled in geometry and architecture His duty is to advise with the Board of General Purposes on all plans of building or edifices undertaken by the Grand Lodge, and furnish plans and estimates for the same; to superintend their construction, and see that they are conformable to the plans approved by the Grand Master, the Grand Lodge, and the Board of General Purposes; to suggest improvements, and make an annual report on the condition of all Grand Lodge edifices. The office is not known in the Grand Lodges of the United States, but where there is a temple or hall belonging to a Grand Lodge, the duty of attending to it is referred to a hall committee, which, when necessary, engages the services of a professional architects.

• SUPERINTENDING GRAND LODGE OF AMERICA

See General Grand Lodge

• SUPERIOR

The Sixth and last Degree of the German Union of the Twenty-two.

• SUPERIORS, UNKNOWN

See Unknown Superiors

• SUPER-MASONIC

Ragon (Ortodoxie Maçonique, page 73) calls the advanced Degrees, as being beyond Ancient Craft Masonry, Grades Super Maçonniques.

• SUPPLANTING

All the Old Constitutions, without exception, contain a charge against one Fellow supplanting another in his work. Thus, for instance, the third Charge in the Harleian Manuscript, number 1054, says: "Also that no master nor fellow shall supplant others of their work, that is to say, if they have taken a world or stand master of a Lord's work, you shall not put him out of it if he be able of cunning to end the work." From this we derive the modern doctrine that one Lodge cannot interfere with the work of another and that a candidate beginning his initiation in a Lodge must finish it, in the same Lodge.

• SUPPORTS OF THE LODGERS

The symbolism connected with the Supports of the lodge is one of the earliest and most extensively prevalent in the Order One of the Catechisms of the eighteenth century gives it in these words:

What supports your Lodge? Three great Pillars. What are their names? Wisdom, Strength. and Beauty Who doth the Pillar of wisdom represent? The Senior Master in the East. Who doth the Pillar of Strength represent? The Senior Warden in the West Who doth the Pillar of Beauty represent? The Junior Warden in the South. Why should the Master represent the Pillar of Wisdom? Because he gives instructions to the Crafts to carry on their work in a proper manner, with good harmony. Why should the Senior Warden represent the Pillar of Strength? As the Sun sets to finish the day, so the Senior Warden stands in the West to pay the hirelings their wages which is the Strength and support of all business. Why should the Junior Warden represent the Pillar of Beauty? Because he stands in the South at high twelve at noon, which is the beauty of the day, to call the men from work to refreshments and to see that they come on again in due time, that the master may have pleasure and profit therein . Why is it said that your Lodge is supported by these three great Pillars—Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty?Because Wisdom Strength and Beauty is the finisher of all works, and nothing can be carried on without them. Why so, brother? Because there is Wisdom to contrive, Strength to support, and beauty to adorn.

Preston, repeats substantially, but, of course, with an improvement of the language, this lecture; and he adds to it the symbolism of the three orders of architecture of which these pillars are said to be composed. These, he says, are the Tuscan, Doric and Corinthian. The mistake of enumerating the Tuscan among the ancient orders was corrected by subsequent ritualists. Preston also referred the supports symbolically to the three Ancient Grand Masters. This Symbolism was afterward transferred by Webb from the First to the Third Degree. Webb, in modifying the lecture of Preston, attributed the supports not to the Lodge, but to the Institution: an unnecessary alteration, since the Lodge is but the type of the Institution. His language is: "Our Institution is said to be supported by Wisdom, Strengths and beauty because it is necessary that there should be Wisdom to contrive, Strength to support, and Beauty to adorn all great and important undertakings He follows the ancient reference of the pillars to the three officers, and adopts Preston's symbolism of the three Orders of Architecture, but he very wisely substitutes the Ionic for the Tuscan. Hemming, in his lectures adopted by the Grand Lodge of England in 1813, retained the symbolism of the pillars, but gave a change in the language. He said: "A Mason's Lodge is supported by three grand pillars. They are called Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty. Wisdom to contrive, Strength to support, and beauty to adorn. Wisdom to direct us in all our undertakings, strength to support us in all our difficulties, and Beauty to adorn the inward man ." The French Freemasons reserve the same symbolism. Bazot (Manuel , page 225) says: "'three great pillars sustain the Lodge. The first, the emblem of Wisdom is represented by the Master who sits in the East, whence light and his commands emanate. The second, the emblem of Strength, is represented by the Senior Warden, who sits in the West, where the workmen are paid, whose strength and existence are preserved by the wages which they receive. The third and last pillar is the emblem of Beauty; it is represented by the Junior Warden, who sits in the South, because that position typifies the middle of the day, whose beauty is perfect at this time the workmen repose from work; and it is thence that the Junior Warden sees them return to the Lodge and resume their labors." German Freemasons also use them in lectures. Schröder, the author of the most philosophical ritual, says: "The universal Lodge, as well as every particular one, is supported by three great invisible columns— Wisdom, Strengths and beauty; for as every building is planned and fashioned by Wisdom, owes its durability and solidity to Strength, and is made symmetrical and harmonious by Beauty, so ought our spiritual building to be designed by Wisdom, which gives it the firm foundation of Truth, on which the Strength of conviction may build, and self-knowledge complete the Structure, and give it permanence and continuance by means of right, justice, and resolute perseverance; and Beauty will finally adorn the edifice with all the social virtues, with brotherly love and union, with benevolence, kindness, and a comprehensive philanthropy." Stieglitz, in his work on the Old German Architecture (I, page 239), after complaining that the building principles of the old German artists were lost to us, because, considering them as secrets of the Brotherhood, they deemed it unlawful to commit them to writing, yet thinks that enough may be found in the old documents of the Fraternity to sustain the conjecture that these three supports were familiar to the Operative Masons. He says: "Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty were honored by them as supporting pillars for the perfect accomplishment of the works; and thence they considered them symbolically as essential pillars for the support of the Lodge. Wisdom, which, established on science, gives invention to the artist, and the right arrangement and appropriate disposition of the whole and of all its parts; Strength, which, proceeding from the harmonious balance of all the forces, promotes the secure erection of the building; and Beauty, which, manifested in God's creation of the world, adorns the work and makes it perfect."

We can hardly doubt, from the early appearances of this symbol of the three supports, and from its unchanged form in all countries, that it dates its origin from a period earlier than the Revival in 1717, and that it may be traced to the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, where Stieglitz says it existed. One thing is clear, that the symbol is not found among those of the Gnostics, and was not familiar to the Rosicrucians; and, therefore, out of the three sources of our symbolism-—Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism, and Operative Masonry it if most probable that it has been derived from the last. When the advanced Degrees were fabricated, and Christianity began to furnish its symbols and doctrine to the new Freemasonry, the old Temple of Solomon was by some of them abandoned, and that other Temple adopted to which Christ had referred when he said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

The old supports of Wisdom, ,Strength, and Beauty, which had sufficed for the Gothic builders, and which they, borrowing them from the results of their labors on the Cathedrals, had applied Symbolically to their Lodges, were discarded, and more spiritual supports for a more spiritual temple were to be selected. There had been a new Dispensation, and there was to be a new Temple. The great doctrine of that new Dispensation was to furnish the supporting pillars for the new Temple. In these high Christianized Degrees we therefore no longer find the columns of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, but the spiritual ones of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

But the form of the symbolism is unchanged. The East, the West, and the South are still the spots where we find the new, as we did the old, pillars. Thus the triangle is preserved; for the triangle is the Masonic symbol of God, who is, after all, the true support of the Lodge.

• SUPREME AUTHORITY

The supreme authority in Freemasonry is that dogmatic power from whose decisions there is no appeal. At the head of every Rite there is a supreme authority which controls and directs the acts of all subordinate bodies of the Rite. In the United States, and in the American Rite which is there practiced, it would, at the first glance, appear that the supreme authority is divided. That of Symbolic Lodges is vested in Grand Lodges, of Royal Arch Chapters in Grand Chapters, of Royal and Select Councils in Grand Councils, and of Commanderies of Knights Templar in the Grand Encampment. And so far as ritualistic questions and matters of internal arrangement are concerned, the supreme authority is so divided. But the supreme authority of Freemasonry in each State is actually vested in the Grand Lodge of that State.

It is universally recognized as Masonic Law that a Freemason expelled or suspended by the Grand Lodge, or by a Subordinate Lodge with the approval and confirmation of the Grand Lodge, thereby stands expelled or suspended from Royal Arch, from Cryptic, and from Templar Masonry. The same rules apply to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Nor can he be permitted to visit any of the Bodies in either of these divisions of the Rite so long as he remains under the ban of expulsion of the Grand Lodge. So the status or condition of every Freemason in the jurisdiction is controlled by the Grand Lodge, from whose action on that subject there is no appeal. The Masonic life and death of every member of the Craft, in every class of the Order, is in its hands, and thus the Grand Lodge becomes the real supreme authority of the jurisdiction.

• SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE STARS

The title in French is Supreme Commardeur des Astres. A Degree said to have been invented at Geneva in 1779, and found in the collection of M. A. Viany.

• SUPREME CONSISTORY

In French, the title is Supreme Cosisistore. The title of some of the highest Bodies in the Rite of Mizraim. In the original construction of the Rite at Naples the meanders of the Ninetieth Degree met in a Suprême Consistory. When the Bederides took charge of the Rite they changed the title of the governing Body to Supreme Council.

• SUPREME COUNCIL

The Supreme Masonic authority of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is called a Supreme Council. A Supreme Council claims to derive the authority for its existence from the Constitutions of 1786. We have no intention here of entering into the question of the authenticity of that document. The question is open to the historian, and has been amply discussed, with the natural result of contradictory conclusions But he who accepts the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite as genuine Freemasonry, and owes his obedience as a Freemason to its constituted authorities, is compelled to recognize those Constitutions wherever or whenever they may have been enacted as the fundamental law—the constitutional rule of his Rite. To their authority all the Supreme Councils owe their legitimate existence.

Dr. Frederiek Dalcho, who, in the opinion of Doctor Mackey, may very properly be considered as the founder in the United States, and therefore in the world, of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in its latest form as the legitimate successor of the Rite of Perfection or of Herodem, has given in the Circular written by him, and published December 4, 1802, by the Supreme Council at Charleston, the following account of the establishment of Supreme Councils: "On the 1st of May, 1786, the Grand Constitution of the Thirty-third Degree, called the Supreme Council of Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, was finally ratified by his Majesty the King of Prussia, who, as Grand Commander of the Order of Prince of the Royal Secret, possessed the Sovereign Masonic power over all the Graft. In the new Constitution, this high power was conferred on a Supreme Council of nine Brethren in each nation, who possess all the Masonic prerogatives, in their own district, that his Majesty individually possessed, and are Sovereigns of Masonry."

The basic law for the establishment of a Supreme Council is found in these words in the Latin Constitutions of 1786: "The First Degree will be subordinated to the Second, that to the Third, and so in order to the Sublime, Thirty-third, and last, which will watch over all the others, will correct their errors and will govern them, and whose Congregation or Convention will be a dogmatic Supreme Grand Council, the Defender and Conservator of the Order, which it will govern and administer according to the present Constitutions and those which may hereafter he enacted."

But the Supreme Council at Charleston derived its authority and its information from what are called the French Constitutions; and it is in them that we find the statement that Frederick invested the Supreme Council with the same prerogatives that he himself possessed, a provision not contained in the Latin Constitutions. The twelfth article says: "The Supreme Council will exereise all the Masonic sovereign powers of which his Majesty Frederick II, King of Prussia, was possessed."

These Constitutions further declare (Article 5) that "every Supreme Council is composed of nine Inspectors-General, five of whom should profess the Christian religion." In the same article it is provided that "there shall be only one Council of this degree in each nation or kingdom in Europe, two in the United States of America as far removed as possible the one from the other, one in the English islands of America, and one likewise in the French islands " It was in compliance with these Constitutions that the Supreme Council at Charleston, South Carolina, was instituted. In the Circular, already cited, Dalcho gives this account of its establishment: "On the 31st of May, 1801, the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree for the United States of America was opened, with the high honors of Masonry, by Brothers John Mitchell and Frederick Dalcho, Sovereign Grand Inspectors-General; and in the course of the present year (1802) the whole number of Grand Inspectors-General was completed, agreeably to the Grand Constitutions." This was the first Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite ever formed. From it has emanated either directly or indirectly all the other Councils which have been since established in America or Europe.

Although it now exercises jurisdiction only over a part of the United States under the title of the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, it claims to be and is recognized as "the Mother Council of the World." Under its authority a Supreme Council, the second in date, was established by Count de Grasse in the French West Indies, in 1802; a third in France, by the same authority, in 1804; and a fourth in Italy in 1805. In 1813 the Masonic Jurisdiction of the United States was divided; the Mother Council establishing at the City of New York a Supreme Council for the Northern Jurisdiction, and over the States north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, reserving to itself all the remainder of the territory of the United States. The seat of the Northern Council is now at Boston, Massachusetts; and although the offices of the Grand Commander and SecretaryGeneral of the Southern Council have been in the City of Washington, whence its documents emanate, its seat has continued constructively at Charleston, South Carolina.

On their first organization, the Supreme Councils were limited to nine members in each. That rule continued to be enforced in the Mother Council until the year 1859, when the number was increased to thirty-three. Similar enlargements have been made in all the other Supreme Councils except that of Scotland, which still retains the original number. The several officers of the original Supreme Council at Charleston were designated: a Most Puissant Sovereign Grand Commander, Most Illustrious Lieutenant Grand Commander, Illustrious Treasurer-General of the Holy Empire, Illustrious Secretary-General of the Holy Empire, Illustrious Grand Master of Ceremonies, and Illustrious Captain of the Guards. In 1859, with the change of numbers in the membership, there was also made a change in the number and titles of the officers.

These now in the Mother Council, according to its present Constitution, are:

1. Sovereign Grand Commander 2. Lieutenant Grand Commander 3. Secretary-General of the Holy Empire 4. Grand Prior 5. Grand Chancellor 6. Grand Minister of State 7. Treasurer-General of the Holy Empire 8. Grand Auditor 9. Grand Almoner 10. Grand Constable 11 Grand Chamberlain 12. First Grand Equerry 13. Second Grand Equerry 14. Grand Standard-Bearer 15. Grand Sword-Bearer 16. Grand Herald

The Secretary-General is properly the seventh officer, but by a decree of the Supreme Council he was made the third officer in rank "while the office continues to be filled by Brother Albert G. Mackey, the present incumbent, who is the Dean of the Supreme Council." Doctor Mackey held this position until his death. The officers somewhat vary in other Supreme Councils, but the presiding and recording officers are everywhere a Sovereign Grand Commander and a Secretary-General of the Holy Empire.

• SUPREME COUNCILS, ANCIENT AND AGCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE

These Councils are organized in almost every country of the world, a number being under royal patronage, and in some nations are the governing power over all existing Freemasonry. A synoptical history of all the Supreme Councils that have ever existed, with the manner of their formation in chronological order, is published in the Proceedings, Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, 1908.

A genealogical tree of these Councils appears in the New Age, January, 1907. A list of the Supreme Councils of the world with complete account of the whole organization is given in Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry. On September 22, 1875, a Congress of the various Supreme Councils was convened at Lausanne, Switzerland, to consider such matters as might then and there be submitted for consideration and united action, and be deemed for the general benefit of the Rite. Much speculation and lack of confidence was the result among many of the invited participants lest they might be committed by uniting in the Conference. The Congress, however, was held, and a Declaration of Principles set forth. There was also stipulated and agreed upon a Treaty, involving highly important measures, embraced within twenty-three articles, which was concluded September 22, 1875. "The intimate alliance and confederation of the contracting Masonic powers extended and extends under their auspices to all the subordinates and to all true and faithful Freemasons of their respective jurisdictions.

"Whoever may have illegitimately and irregularly received any Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite can nowhere enjoy the prerogatives of a Freemason until he has been lawfully healed by the regular Supreme Council of his own country."

The Confederated Powers again recognized and proclaimed as Grand Constitutions of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Constitutions and Statutes adopted May 1,1876, with the modifications and Tiler adopted by the Congress of Lausanne, the 22d of September, 1875.

The Declaration and articles were signed by representatives of eighteen Supreme Councils, who recognized the territorial Jurisdictions of the following Supreme Councils:

Northern, United States, Southern United States,Central America, England, Belgium,Canada, Chile, Colon, Scotland, Colombia, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Argentine Republic, Switzerland, Uruguay,Venezuela.

The same delegates, by virtue of the plenary powers they held, and by which they were justified, promised, for their principals, to maintain and defend with all their power, to preserve, and cause to he observed and respected, not only the territorial Jurisdiction of the Confederated Supreme Councils represented in the said Congress at Lausanne, and the parties therein contracting, but also the territorial Jurisdiction of the other Supreme Councils named. It is not possible to give statistics as to the number of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Masons in the world, but calculating those, of whatever Degree, who are governed by Supreme Councils in the different nations, it is but reasonable to presume one-half of the entire Fraternity is of that Rite, and as a matter of extensiveness, it is par excellence the Universal Rite. In many nations there is no other Rite known, and therein it confers all the Degrees of its system, including the first three. Among the English-speaking Freemasons, it builds its structure upon the York or the American system of three Degrees.

In the United States its organizations are to be found in every prominent city and many towns, and in numerous instances possessing and occupying temples built specially to accommodate its own peculiar forms, elegant of structure and in appointments, and of great financial value. The progress of this Rite in the nineteenth century has been most remarkable, and its future appears without a cloud.

The Supreme Councils organized since 1801 have not all continued to exist. At an International Congress at Washington, October 7, 1912, of the Supreme Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,! twenty-nine Councils were recognized in the proceedings as regular and twenty-six of them were represented. The Councils then listed as regular were as follows: Argentine Republic, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Central America , Chile, Colon (for Cuba),Colombia, United States of Dominican Republic Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Northern United States, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Scotland ,Serbia, Southern United States, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela. In that year, 1912, two Supreme Councils were organized, the Netherlands and Servia, and from that time to 1928 these Supreme Councils: Austria, Szecho-Slovakia, Denmark, Netherlands, Panama, Poland, and Roumania.

A complete list of all those organized up to 1880 is as follows:

Southern United States 1801 Port-au-Prince..1802 France..............1804 Italy-Milan.......1805 Naples .............1809 Spain ...............1811 Northern United States 1813 Jamaica..........1815 Belgium......... 1817 Ireland...........1824 Brazil.............1829 Peru ..............1830 New Grenada (U. S. Colombia)1833 Hayti..............1836 Portugal ........1842 England and Wales 1845 Scotland........1846 Uruguay........1806 Ecuador.........1857 Argentine 1858 Colon..............1859 Mexico............1860 Palermo..........1861 Turkey ...........1861 Domican Republic 1861 Turin ...............1862 Florence ..........1814 Venezuela .......1865 Chile................1870 Paraguay ........1870 Hungary .........1871 Central America l871 Greece..............1872 Switzerland .....1873 Canada ...........1874 Rome...............1875 Egypt...............1878 Tunis...............1880

• SUPREME GRAND LODGE OF THE UNITED STATES

See General Grand Lodge

• SURINAM OR DUTCH GUIANA

A country in South America. In 1767 or 1769 there was a Lodge La Vertueuse at Batavia where also was instituted La Fidele Sincérité in 1771. La Vertueuse flourished long as No. 8, De Ster in het Oosten, in the records of the Grand Lodge of the Netherlands, which also has at Paramaribo, Concordia Lodge, dating from 1773.

• SUSPENSION

This is a Masonic punishment, which consists of a temporary deprivation of all the rights and privileges of Freemasonry. There are two kinds, delfrlite and indefinite; but the effect of the penalty, for the time that it lasts, is the same in both kinds. The mode in which restoration is effected differs in each.

1. Definite Suspension.—By definite suspension is meant a deprivation of the rights and privileges of Freemasonry for a fixed period of time, which period is always named in the sentence. By the operation of this penalty, a Freemason is for the time prohibited from the exercise of all his Masonie privileges. His rights are placed in abeyance, and he can neither visit Lodges, hold Masonie communication, nor receive Masonic relief, during the period for which he has been suspended. Yet his Masonic citizenship is not lost. In this respect suspension may be compared to the Roman punishment of relegatio, or banishment, which Ovid, who had endured it, de scribes in Tristia (v, 11) with technical correctness, a a penalty which "takes axvay neither life nol property nor rights of citizens, but only drives away from the country."

So by suspension the rights and duties of the Freemason are not obliterated, but their exercise only interdicted for the period limited by the sentence, and as soon as this has terminated he at once resumes his former position in the Order, and is reinvested with all his Masonic rights, whether those rights be of a private or of an official nature. Thtls, if an officer of a Lodge has been Suspended for three months from all the rights and privileges of Freemasonry, a suspension of his official functions also takes place. But a suspension from the discharge of the functions of an office is not a deprivation of the office; and therefore, as soon as the three months to which tile suspension had been limited have expiled, the brother resumes all his rights in the Order and the Lodge and with them, of course, the office which he had held at the time that the sentence of suspension had been inflicted.

2. Indefinite Suspension.—This is a suspension for a period not determined and fixed by the Sentence, but to continue during the pleasure of the Lodge. In this respect only does it differ from the preceding punishment. The position of a Freemason, under definite or indefinite suspension, is precisely the same as to the exercise of all his rights and privileges which in both cases remain in abeyance. Restoration in each brings with it a resumption of all the rights and functions, the exercise of which had been interrupted by the sentence of suspension. Neither definite nor indefinite suspension can be inflicted except after due notification and trial, and then only by a vote of two-thirds of the members present.

Restoration to Masonic rights differs, as we have said, in these two kinds. Restoration from definite suspension may take place either by a vote of the Lodge abridging the time, when two-thirds of all the members must concur, or it will terminate by natural expiration of the period fixed by the sentence, and that without any vote of the Lodge. Thus, if a member is suspended for three months, at the end of the third month his suspension terminates, and he is ipso facto (by that fact) restored to all his rights and privileges. In the case of indefinite suspension, the only method of restoration is by a vote of the Lodge at a regular meeting, two-thirds of those present concurring. Lastly, it may be observed that, as the suspension of a member suspends his prerogatives, it should also suspend his dues. He cannot he expected, in justice, to pay for that which he does not receive, and Lodge dues are simply a compensation made by a member for the enjoyment of the privileges of membership. Of course the number concurring may vary from that mentioned above, as in this and other similar instances such rules are subject to alteration by the governing Cody (see Doctor Mackey's revised Jurisprudence of Freemasonry).

• SUSSEX, DUKE OF

The Duke of Sussex is entitled to a place in Masonic biography, not only because, of all the Grand Masters on record, he held the office the longest—the Duke of Leinster, of Ireland, alone excepted—but also because of his devotion to the Institution, and the zeal With which he cultivated and protected its interests. Augustus Frederick, ninth child and sixth son of George III, King of England, was born January 27, 1773.

He was initiated in.1798 at a Lodge in Berlin. In 1805, the honorary rank of a Past Grand Master was conferred on him by the Grand Lodge of England. May 13, 1812, he was appointed Deputy Grand Master; and April 13, 1813, the Prince Regent, afterward George IV, having declined a re-election as Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex Was unanimously elected; and in the same year the two rival Grand Lodges of England were united. The Duke was Most Excellent Zerubbabel of the Grand Chapter, and Grand Superintendent of the Grand Conclave of Knights Templar. He never, however, took any interest in the Orders of Knighthood, to which, indeed, he appears to have had some antipathy. During his long career the Grand Conclave met but once. By annual elections, he retained the office of Grand Master until his death, Which took place April 21, 1843, in the seventyfirst year of his age, having completed a Masonic administration as head of the English Craft of upward of thirty years.

During that long period, it was impossible that some errors should not have been committed. The Grand Master's conduct in reference to two distinguished Freemasons, Doctors Crucefix and Oliver, was as by no means creditable to his reputation for justice or forbearance. But the general tenor of his life as an upright man and Freemason, and his great attachment to the Order, tended to compensate for the few mistakes of his administration. One who had been most bitterly opposed to his course in reference to Brothers Crucefix and Oliver, and had not been sparing of his condemnation, paid, after his death, this tribute to his Masonic virtues and abilites: "As a Freemason," said the Freemasons Quarterly Review (1843, page 120), "the Duke of Sussex was the most accomplished Craftsman of his day. His knowledge of the mysteries was, as it were, intuitive; his reading on the subject was extensive; his correspondence equally so; and his desire to be introduced to any Brother from whose experience he could derive any information had in it a craving that marked his great devotion to the Order."

On the occasion of the presentation of an offering by the Fraternity in 1838, the Duke gave the following account of his Masonic life, which embodies sentiments that are highly honorable to him:

My duty as your grand Master is to take care that no political or religious question intrudes itself, and had I thought that, in presenting this tribute, any political feeling had influenced the brethren, I can only say that then the Grand Master would not have been gratified. Our object is unanimity, and we can find a centre of unanimity unknown elsewhere. I recollect twenty-five years ago, at a meeting in many respects similar to the present, a magnificent jewel, by voluntary vote, was presented to the Earl Moira previous to his journey to India. I had the honor to preside, and I remember the powerful and beautiful appeal which that excellent brother made on the occasion.

I am now sixty-six years of age—I say this without regret—the true Mason ought to think that the first day of his birth is but a step on his way to the final close of life. When I tell you that I have completed forty years of a Masonic life—there may be older Masons—but that s a pretty good Specimen of my attachment to the Order. In 1798, I entered Masonry in a Lodge at Berlin, and there I served several offices, and as Warden was a representative of the Lodge in the Grand Lodge of England. I afterwards was acknowledged and received with the usual compliment paid to a mender of the Royal Family, by being appointed a Past Grand Warden. I again went abroad for three years, and on my return joined various Lodges, and upon the retirement of the Prince Regent who became Patron of the Order, I was elected Grand Master.

An epoch of considerable interest intervened, and I became charged, in 1813-4, with a most important mission—the union of the two London societies My most excellent Brother the Duke of Kent accepted the title of Grand Master of the Atholl Masons, as they were denominated; I was the Grand Master of those called the Prince of Wales's. In three months we carried the union of the two societies, and I had the happiness of presiding over the united fraternity . This I consider to have been the happiest event of my life. It brought all Masons upon the Level and the Square, and showed the world at large that the differences of common life did not exist in Masonry, and it showed to Masons that by a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, what great good might be effected.

• SWASTIKA, THE

The swastika easily is the most universal and also the most ancient of symbolic devices. In form it has been of so many types that no line can be drawn between the swastika properly so called and what has a mere similarity to it; of names, such as swastika, suastica, fylfot, there is a long eatalog. It is impossible to say that it means anything in particular because it has in places and times been used to stand for so many hundreds of things! For almost the first time in history it was in Europe, Britain, and America being discarded and forgotten (except for trade-marks) until the Nazis, for some obscure reason of their own, adopted one of its thousand forms for their emblem. At bottom the device is nothing but two lines crossed, like the + sign; the Lines may be broken or not, the broken ends may be turned right or left, or they may be curved, or be ovoids, or ares of a circle, ete.; in one instance, the device consisted of four legs, bent at the knee; again, four arms, bent at the elbow.

Of those who have studied it Bro. and Count Goblet d'Alviela probably devoted more years and more learning to it than any other scholar. He could discover no beginning of it, but believed that in prehistorie times it was a sign used to denote either the cardinal points of the compass, or the North Star, once the cynosure and concern of every man on the seas, the arms of the swastika suggesting the swing of the Great dipper about the star, as on a pivot. It has never had a place in Freemasonry, except in the Scottish Prince of Mercy Degree, and then in a scarcely recognizable form, and with a special meaning defined by the Degree.

Among expert symbologists (a profession, not a science) it is classified as a "dead symbol." It has no meaning, force, substance, or suggestion of its own, no more than a diagram on a sheet of paper. The square, by contrast, is a symbol "alive" because it has ever been in use, and ever will be, and its use charges it with a Living meaning. A man gains something from the symbolism of the square; he can gain nothing from any form of the swastika because it is never used. It is doubtful if Medieval Masons ever could have been persuaded to employ it, except as a geometric ornament; because, first, it was forbidden by the church; and, second, it would have looked to them too much like a caricature of the Cross. They adopted no idle or dead symbols; each of their own had for them a use either for their working or for their thinking.

(The Migration of Symbols, by Count Goblet d' Alviela [Belgian Senator; eminent in Belgian Freemasonry]; Archibald Constable; Westminster; 1894. Symbolism of the East and TZesC, by Mrs. MurrayAynsley; George Redway; London; 1900. Chapter IV contains a long catalog of forms and of their distribution. Report of the U. S. National Museum, by Thomas Wilson; 1894; pp. 757-1011.)

• SWEDEN

Freemasonry was first introduced to Sweden in the year 1735, when Count Axel Eric Wrede Sparre, who had been initiated in Paris, established a Lodge at Stockholm. Of this Lodge scarcely anything is known and it probably soon fell into decay.

Wing Frederick I promulgated a Decree in 1738 which interdicted all Masonic meetings under the penalty of death. At the end of seven years the Edict was removed, and Freemasonry became popular. Saint John Auxiliary Lodge, however, was working when the Decree was wit withdrawn. Lodges were again publicly recognized and in 1746 the Freemasons of Stockholm struck a medal on the occasion of the birth of the Prince Royal, afterward Gustavus III. In 1753, the Swedish Freemasons laid the foundation of an orphan asylum at Stockholm which was built by the voluntary contributions of the Fraternity, without any assistance from the State.

In 1762, King Adolphus Frederick, in a letter to the Grand Master, declared himself the Protector of the Swedish Lodges, and expressed his readiness to become tile Chief of Freemasonry in his dominions, and to assist in defraying the expenses of the Order. On April 10, 1765, Lord Blayney, Grand Master of England, granted a Deputation to Charles Fullmann, Secretary of the British Embassy at Stockholm, as Provincial Grand Master, With the authority under the "Moderns" Grand Lodge of England to constitute Lodges in Sweden. At the same time, Schubarb, a member of the Rite of Strict Observance, appeared at Stockholm, and endeavored to establish that Rite. He had but little success, as the advanced Degrees had been previously introduced from France.

But this admixture of English, French, and German freemasonry occasioned great dissatisfaction, and gave rise, about this time, to the establisment of an independent system known as the Swedish Rite. In 1770, the Illuminated Grand Chapter was established, and the Duke of Sudermania appointed the Vicarius Salornonis. In 1780, the Grand Lodge of Sweden which for some years had been in abeyance, was revived, and the same Prince elected Grand Master.

This act gave an independent and responsible position to Swedish Freemasonry, and the progress of the Institution in that kingdom has been ever since regular and uninterrupted. On March 22, 1793, Gustavus IV, the King of Sweden, was initiated into Freemasonry in a Lodge at Stockholm, the Duke of Sudermania, then acting as Regent of the Kingdom, presiding as the Grand Master of the Order. In 1796 a Royal Decree enacted that in future all Swedish Princes were by right of birth Freemasons and a Decree against secret societies in 1803 made a Special exception of the Craft. The whole Swedish system has, indeed, been to a large extent under the control of the Royal Family. On the application of the Duke of Sudermania, in 1788, a fraternal alliance was consummated between the Grand Lodges of England and Sweden, and mutual representatives appointed. The Duke of Sudermania ascended the throne in 1809 under the title of Charles XIII. He Continued his attachment to the Order, and retained the Grand Mastership. As a singular mark of his esteem for Freemasonry, the King instituted, May 27, 1811, a new Order of Knighthood, known as the Order of Charles XIII, the members of which were to be selected from Freemasons only. In the Patent of Institution the Wing declared that, in founding the Order, his intention "was not only to excite his subjects to the practice of charity, and to perpetuate the memory of the devotion of the Masonic Order to his person while it was under his protection, but also to give further proofs of his royal benevolence to those whom he had so long embraced and cherished under the name of Freemasons." The Order, besides the Princes of the Royal Family, was to consist of twenty-seven lay, and three ecclesiastical knights, all of whom were to hold equal rank. The Strand Lodge of Sweden practises the Swedish Rite, and exercises its jurisdiction under the title of the National Grand Lodge of Sweden (see Swedish Rite).

• SWEDENBORG, RITE OF

The so-called Rite of Swedenborg, the history of whose foundation has been given in the preceding article, consists of six Degrees:

1. Apprentice.

2. Fellow Craft.

3. Master Neophyte.

4. Illuminated Theosophite.

5. Blue Brother.

6. Red Brother.

It is said to be still practised by some of the Swedish Lodges, but is elsewhere extinct.

Reghellini, in his Esprit do Dosme, gives it as consisting of eight Degrees; but he has evidently confounded it with the Rite of Martinism, also a theosophic Rite, and the ritualism of which also partakes of a Swedenborgian character.

• SWEDISH RITE

The Swedish Rite was established about the year 1777, and is indebted for its existence to the exertions and influence of King Gustavus III. It is a mixture of the pure Rite of York, the high Degrees of the French, the Templarism of the former Strict Observance, and the system of Rosicrucianism. Zinnendorf also had something to do with the formation of the Rite, although his authority was subsequently repudiated by the Swedish Freemasons. It is a Rite that was really established as a reform or compromise to reconcile the conflicting elements of English, German, and French Freemasonry that about the middle of the eighteenth century convulsed the Masonic atmosphere of Sweden.

It consists of twelve Degrees, as follows:

1, 2, 3. Three Symbolic Degrees, constituting the Saint John's Lodge.

4, 5. Scottish Fellow Craft and the Scottish Master of s dint Andrew. These constitute the Scottish Lodge. The Fifth Degree entitles its members to civil rank in the kingdom

6. Knight of the East. In this Degree which is apocalyptic the New Jerusalem and its twelve gates are represented

7. Knight of the West, or True Templar, Master of the Key. The jewel of this Degree, which is a triangle with five red rosettes refers to the five wounds of the Savior.

8. Knight of the South, or Favorite brother of Saint John. This is a Rosicrucian Degree, the ceremony of initiation being derived from that of the Medieval Alchemists.

9. Favorite Brother of Saint Andrew. This Degree is evidently derived from the Freemasonry of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

10. Member of the Chapter.

11. Dignitary of the Chapter.

12. Vicar of Solomon.

The first nine Degrees are under the obedience of the National Grand Lodge of Sweden and Norway, and essentially compose the Rite. The members of the last three are called Brethren of the Red Cross, and constitute another Masonic authority, styled the Illuminated Chapter. The Twelfth Degree is simply one of office, and is only held by the King, who is perpetual Grand Master of the Order. No one is admitted to the Eleventh Degree unless he ean show four quarterings of nobility.

The Swedish Rite was introduced among Lodges in Norway, Denmark, Germany and Russia, and is deseribed by Brother Oliver Day Street, Past Grand Master of Alabama, in the words, "Its teachings are said to be a mixture of the Freemasonry of England, of the 'Scots' degrees, of Templarism, Rosicrucianism and the mystic doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg".

• SWEDENBORG

Emanuel Swedenborg, a distinguished theologian of his age, and the founder of a sect which still exists, has been always mythically connected with Freemasonry. The eagerness is indeed extraordinary with which all Masonic writers, German, French, English, and American, have sought to connect the name and labors of the Swedish sage with the Masonic institution, and that, too, without the slightest foundation for such a theory either in his writings, or in any Credible memorials of his life.

Findel (History of Freemmasonry, page 329), speaking of the reforms in Swedish Freemasonry, says: "Most likely Swedenborg, the mystic and visionary, used his influence in bringing about the new system; at all events, he smoothed the way for it." Lenning speaks of the influence of his teachings upon the Swedish system of Freemasonry, although he does not absolutely claim him as a Freemason. Reghellini, in his Esprit du Dogme de la FrancheMaçonnerie, or Genius of the Tenets of Freemasonry, writes thus: "Swedenborg made manly very learned researches on the subject of the Masonic mysteries. He thought that their doctrines were of the highest antiquity, having emanated from the Egyptians, the Persians, the Magi, the Jews, and the Greeks.

He also became the head of a new religion in his effort to reform that of Rome. For this purpose he wrote his Celestial Jerusalem, or his Spiritual World: he mingled with his reform, ideas which were purely Masonic. In this celestial Jerusalem the Word formerly communicated by God to Moses is found; this word is Jehovah, lost on earth, but which he invites us to find in Great Tartary, a Country still governed, even in our days, by the patriarchs, by which he means allegorically to say that this people most nearly approach to the primitive condition of the perfection of innocence." But there is no work written by Swedenborg which bears either of those titles, Celestial Jerusalem or Spiritual World. It is possible that Reghellini alludes either to the Arcana Celestia, published in 1749-53, or to the De Nova Hierosolyma, published in 1758. The same writer, in his Maçonnerie considéree comme le résultat d es religions Egyptienne, Juive et Chrétienne, or Masonry considered as the result of Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian Religions (ii, page 454), repeatedly speaks of Swedenborg as a Masonic reformer, and sometimes as a Masonic impostor Ragon also cites Reghellini in his Orthodoxe Maçonnique (page 255), and recognizes Swedenborg as the founder of a Masonic system.

Thory, in his Acta Latornorum, cites "the system of Swedenborg"; and in fact all the French writers on Masonic ritualism appear to have borrowed their idea of the Swedish theosophist from the statement of Reghellini, and have not hesitated to rank him among the principal Masonic teachers of his time. Doctor Oliver is the earliest of the English Masonic writers of eminence who has referred to Swedenborg. He, too often careless of the weight of his expressions and facile in the acceptance of authority speaks of the Degrees, the system, as well as the Freemasonry of Swedenborg just in the same tone as he would of those of Cagliostro, of Hund, or of Tschoudy. Lastly, and in the United States of America, we had a more recent writer, Brother Samuel Beswick, who was evidently a man of ability and of considerable research.

He has culminated to the zenith in his Claims of the Masonic character of Swedenborg. He published at New York, in 1870, a volume entitled, The Swedenborg Rite and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth Century. In this work, which, outside of its Swedenborgian fancies, contains much interesting matter; he traces the Masonic life of Swedenborg from his initiation, the time and place of which he makes in 1706, in a Scottish Lodge in the town of Lund, in Sweden, which is a fair specimen of the value of his historical statements. But after treating the great Swede as a Masonic reformer, as the founder of a Rite, and as evincing during his whole life a deep interest in Freemasonry, he appears to us to surrender the whole question in the following closing words of his work:

From the very moment of his initiation, Swedenborg appears to have resolved never to allude to his membership or to his knowledge of Freemasonry, either publicly or privately. He appears to have made up his mind to keep it a profound secret, and to regard it as something which had no relation to his publie life. We have searched his Itinerary, which contains brief references to everything, he saw, heard, and read during his travels, for something having relation to his Masonic knowledge, intercourse, correspondence, visits to Lodges, places, or persons; but there is a studied silence a systematic avoidance of all allusion to it. In his theological works, his Memorable Relations speak of almost every sect in Christendom, and of all sorts of organizations, or of individuals belonging thereto. But Freemasonry is an exception: there is a systematic silence in relation to it.

It is true that he finds in this reticence of Swedenborg the evidence that he was a Freemason and interested in Freemasonry, but others will most probably form a different conclusion. The fact is that Swedenborg never was a Freemason. The reputation of being one, that has been so continuously attributed to him by Masonic writers, is based first upon the assumptions of Reghellini, whose statements in his Esprit du Dogme were never questioned nor their truth investigated, as they should have been, but were blindly followed by succeeding writers. Neither Wilkinson, nor Burk, nor White, who wrote his biography—the last the most exhaustively—nor anything in his own voluminous writings, lead aq to anx such conclusion. But the second and more important basis on which the theory of a Swedenborgian Freemasonry has been built is the conduct of some of his own disciples, who, imbued with his religious views, being Freemasons, carried the spirit of the New Jerusalem doctrines into their Masonic speculations. There was, it is true, a Masonic Rite or System of Swedenborg, but its true history is this:

About that period we find Pernetty working out his schemes of Masonic reform. Pernetty was a theosophist, a Hermetic philosopher, a disciple, to some extent, of Jacob Böhme, that prince of mystics. To such a man, the reveries, the visions, and the spiritual speculations of Swedenborg were peculiarly attractive. He accepted them as an addition to the theosophic views which he already had received.

About the year 1760 he established at Avignon his Rite of the Illuminati, in which the reveries of both theme and Swedenborg were introduced. In 1783 this system was reformed by the Marquis de Thomé, another Swedenborgian, and out of that reform arose what was called the Rite of Swedenborg, not because Swedenborg had established it, or had any-thing directly to do with its establishment, but because it n as based on his peculiar theological views, and because its symbolism was borrowed from the ideas he had advanced in the highly symbolical works that he had written. A portion of these Degrees, or other Degrees much like them, have been called apocalyptic; not bemuse Saint John had, any more than Swedenborg, a connection with them, but because their system of initiation is based on the mystical teaehings of the Apocalypse; a work which, not less than the theories of the Swede, furnishes abundant food for a system of Masonico-religious symbolism.

Benedict Chastanier, was also another disciple of Swedenborg, and who was one of the founders of the Avignon Society, carried these views into England, and founded at London a similar Rite, which afterward was changed into a purely religious association.

"The Theosophical Society, instituted for the purpose of promoting the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem." In one of his visions, Swedenborg thus describes a palace in the spiritual world which he had visited. From passages such as these which abound in his various treatises, the theosophic Freemasons concocted those Degrees which have been called the freemasonry of Swedenborg. To no reader of the passage annexed can its appropriateness as the basis of a system of symbolism fail to be apparent.

I accordingly entered the temple, which was magnificent, and in the midst of which a woman was represented clothed in purple, holding in her right hand a golden crown piece, and in her left a chain of pearls. The statue and the representation were only fantastic representations for these infernal spirits, by closing the interior Degree and opening the exterior only, are able at the pleasure of their imagination to represent magnificent Objects.

Perceiving that they were illusions, I prayed to the Lord. Immediately the interior of my spirit was opened and I saw, instead of the superb temple, a Tottering house, open to the weather from the top to the bottom. In the place of the woman-state an image was suspended, having the head of a dragon, the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion: in short, it was the beast rising out of the sea, as described in the Apocalypse (xiii, 2). In the place of a park, there gas a marsh full of frogs and I was informed that under this marsh there was a great hewn stone, beneath which the Word was entirely hidden. afterwards I said to the Prelate, who was the fabricator of these illusions,"Is that your temple? "Yes," replied he, it is." Immediately his interior sight was opened like mine, and he saw what I did.

"How now, what do I see?" cried he. I told him that it was the effect of the celestial light, wish discovers the interior quality of everything, anal which taught him at that very moment what faith separated front good works was. While I was speaking, a wind blowing from the east destroyed the Temple and the image, dried up the marsh, and discovered the stone under which the Sacred Word was Concealed. A genial warmth, like that of the spring, descended from heaven; and in the place of that Temple we saw a tent, the exterior of which was very plain. I looked into the interior of it, and there I saw the foundation-stone beneath which the Sacred Word was concealed ornamented with precious stones, the splendor of which. diffusing itself over the walls of the Temple, diversified the colors of the paintings, which represented cherubims. The angels, perceiving me to be filled with admiration; told me that I should see still greater wonders than these. They were then permitted to open the third heaven, inhabited by the celestial angels, who dwelt inlove. All of a sudden the splendor of a light of fire caused the Temple to disappear, and left nothing to be seen but the Lord himself, standing upon the foundation-stone—the Lord who was the Word, such as he showed Himself (Apocalypse i, 13 to 16). Holiness immediately filled all the interior of the spirit of the angels, upon Which they made an effort to prostrate themsell es, hut the Lord shut the passage to the light from the third heavers openiny the passage to the light of the second, which caused the Temple to reappear, with the tent in the midst. Such passages as these might lead one to suppose that Swedenborg was familiar with the system ofMasonic ritualism His complete reticence upon the subject, however, and the whole tenor of his life, his studies, and his habits, assure us that such was not the case; and that if there was really a borrowing of one from the other, and not an accidental coincidence, it was the Freemasons of the advanced Degrees who borrowed from Swedenborg, and not Swedenborg from them. If so, we cannot deny that he has unwillingly exercised a powerful influence on Freemasonry.

• SWITZERLAND

In 1737 Lord Darnley, Grand Master of England, granted a Deputation for Geneva, in Switzerland, to George Hamilton, who, in the same year, established a Provincial Grand Lodge at Geneva. Warrants were granted by this Body to several Lodges in and around the City of Geneva.

Two years afterward, a Lodge, composed principally of Englishmen, was established at Lausanne, under the name of L' Union Parfaite des Etrangers. Findel, on the authority of Mossdorf's edition of Lenning, says that the Warrant for this Lodge was granted by the Duke of Montagu; a statement also made by Thory. This is an error. The Duke of Montagu was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England in 1721, and could not, therefore, have granted a Warrant in 1739. The Warrant must have been issued by the Marquis of Carnarvon, who was Grand Master from April, 1738 to May, 1739.

In an old list of the Regular Lodges on the Registry of England, this Lodge is thus described: "Private Room, Lausanne, in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland, February 2, 1739." Soon after, this Lodge assumed a superintending authority with the title of Helvetic Roman Directory, and instituted many other Lodges in the Pays de Vaud.

But in Switzerland, as elsewhere, Freemasonry was at an early period exposed to persecution. In 1738, almost immediately after their institution, the Lodges at Geneva were suppressed by the magistrates. In 1740, so many calumnies had been circulated in the Swiss Cantons against the Order, that the Freemasons published an Apology for the Order in Der Brachmann, a Zurich journal. It had, however, but little effect, for in 1743 the magistrates of Bern ordered the closing of all the Lodges. This Edict was not obeyed; and therefore, on March 3, 1745, another, still more severe, was issued, by which a penalty of one hundred thalers, and forfeiture of his situation was to be inflicted on every officer of the government who should continue his connection with the Freemasons.

To this the Freemasons replied in a pamphlet entitled Le Franc-Maçon dans la République, published simultaneously, in 1746, at Frankfort and Leipsic. In this work they ably defended themselves from all the unjust charges that had been made against them. Notwithstanding that the result of this defense was that the magistrates pushed their opposition no farther, the Lodges in the Pays de Vaud remained suspended for nineteen years. But in 1764 the primitive Lodge at Lausanne was revived, and the revival was gradually followed by the other Lodges. This resumption of labor was, however, but of brief duration. In 1770 the magistrates again interdicted the meetings. During all this period the Freemasons of Geneva, under a more liberal government, were uninterrupted in their labors, and extended their operations into German Switzerland. June 1, 1769, nine Lodges assembled and formed on June 24 the Independent Grand Lodge of Geneva. Soon afterwards, however, the Craft came into disfavor in the country. In 1771 Lodges had been erected in Vevay and Zurich, which, working at first according to the French system, soon afterward adopted the German ritual. In 1775 the Lodges of the Pays de Vaud were permitted to resume their labors. Formerly, they had worked according to the system of the Grand Lodge of England, whence they had originally derived their Freemasonry; but this they now abandoned, and adopted the Rite of Strict Observance. In the same year the advanced Degrees of France were introduced into the Lodge at Basle. Both it and the Lodge at Lausanne now assumed higher rank, and took the title of Scottish Directories.

A Congress was held at Basle in 1777, in which there were representatives from the Strict Observance Lodges of the Pays de Vaud and the English Lodge of Zurich. It was then determined that the Freemasonry of Switzerland should be divided under two distinct authorities: the one to be called the German Helvetic Directory, with its seat at Zurich; and the other to be called the Scottish Helvetic Roman Directory, whose seat was at Lausanne. This word Roman, or more properly Romunsh, is the name of one of the four languages spoken in Switzerland. It is a corruption of the Latin, and supposed to have been the colloquial dialect of a large part of the Grisons. Still there were great dissensions in the Freemasonry of Switzerland. A clandestine Lodge had been established in 1777, at Lausanne, by one Sidrae, whose influence it was found difficult to cheek. The Helvetic Roman Directory found it necessaryw for this purpose, to enter, in 1779, into a Treaty of Alliance with the Grand Lodge at Geneva, and the Lodge of Sidrae was then at length dissolved and its members dispersed.

The Helvetic Roman Directory published its Constitutions in 1778. The Rite it practised was purely philosophical every Hermetic element having been eliminated The appointment of the Masters of Lodges, who held office for three years, was vested in the Directory, and, in consequences men of ability and learning were chosen, and the Craft were skilfully governed. November, 1782, the Council of Bern interdicted the meetings of the Lodges and the exercise of Freemasonry.

The Helvetic Roman Directorys to give an example of obedience to law, however unjust and oppressive, dissolved its Lodges and discontinued its own meetings. But it provided far a maintenance of its foreign relations, by the appointment of a committee invested with the power of conducting its correspondence and of controlling the foreign Lodges under its obedience.

There was a conference of the Swiss Lodges at Zurich [Zürich] in 1785 to take into consideration certain propositions which had been made by the Congress of Paris, held by the Philalethes; but the desire that a similar Congress should be convened at Lausanne met with no favor from the Directorial Committee. The Grand Orient of France began to exert an influence, and many Lodges of Switzerland, among others ten in Geneva, gave their adhesion to that Body. The seven other Genevan Lodges which were faithful to the English system organized a Grand Orient of Geneva, and in l789 formed an alliance with the Grand Lodge of England. About the same time, the Lodges of the Pays de Vaud, which had been suppressed in 1782 by the government of Bern, resumed their vitality. But the political disturbances consequent on the French Revolution began to exercise their influences in the Cantons. In 1792, the Helvetic Roman Directory suspended work; and its example was followed in 1793 by the Scottish Directory. From 1793 to 1803, Freemasonry was almost dead in Switzerland, although a few Lodges in Geneva and a German one in Nuremberg continued a sickly existence. The Grand Orient of France chartered on September 14, 1802, Hope, or L'Espérance, Lodge at Bern, which, in 1818, became an English Provincial Grand Lodge and on June 24, 1822, formed with several others the National Grand Lodge of Switzerland. In 1813 Hope Lodge had initiated Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg Gotha, afterwards the first King of the Belgians. With the cession of the Republic of Geneva to Franee, the Grand Lodge ceased to exist, and all the Lodges were united with the Grand Orient of France. Several Lodges, however, in the Pays de Vaud, whose Constitution had been irregular, united together to form an independent Body under the title of the Grand National Helvetic Orient. Peter Maurice Glaire introduced his modified Scottish Rite of seven Degrees and was at the age of eighty-seven elected its Grand Master for life.

Glaire was possessed of great abilities, and had been the friend of Stanislaus, King of Poland, in whose interests he had performed several important missions to Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France. He was much attached to Freemasonry, and while in Poland had elaborated on the Scottish system the Rite which he subsequently bestowed Upon the Helvetic Orient. In 1820 there were nineteen Lodges, which worked under four different Obediences, the Scottish Directory, the Grand Helvetic Roman Orient, the English Provincial Grand Lodge, and the Grand Orient of France. besides, there were two Lodges of the Rite of Mizraim, which had been introduced by the Brothers Bedarride.

The Freemasons of Switzerland, weary of these divisions, had been long anxious to build a firm foundation of Masonic unity, and to obliterate forever this state of isolation, where Lodges were proximate in locality but widely asunder in their Masonic relations.

Many attempts were made, but the rivalries of petty authorities and the intolerance of opinion caused them always to be failures. At length a movement, which was finally crowned with success, was inaugurated by the Lodge Modestia sum Libertate, Moderation with Freedom, of Zurich. Being about to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its existence in 1836, it invited the Swiss dodges of all Rites to be present at the festival.

There a proposition for a National Masonic Union was made, which met with a favorable response from all who were present. The reunion at this festival had given so much satisfaction that similar meetings were held in 1835 at Bern, in 1840 at Basle, and in 1842 at Locle. The preliminary means for establishing a Confederacy were discussed at these various biennial conventions, and progress slowly but steadily was made toward the accomplishment of that object. In 1842 the task of preparing a draft of a Constitution for a United Grand Lodge was entrusted to Brother Gysi-Schinz, of Zurich, who so successfully completed it that it gave almost universal satisfaction.

The Grand Lodge Alpina of Switzerland was created in July, 1844, from a fusion of the National Grand Lodge with the Grand Directory of Lodges working the Scottish Rectified Rite, the latter following a Templar Ritual, and dating its activities from 1779. This as a Grand Priory became later in aetive friendly association with the Supreme Council. Brother J. J. Hottinger was the first Grand Master.

Here we may observe that in some countries there has been a tendency to a greater freedom with these time-honored words indicating the Deity, even to substitute something else not so rigid in its definite meaning. As for example, at the seventy-fifth Assembly of the Grand Lodge Alpina, held at Zurich, Switzerland, on Saturday, May 21, 1927, under the presidency of the Grand Master, Dr. Fritz Brandenberg, a motion was made to substitute the word "Divinity" for "God" in the first article of the Constitution, which reads: "The Freemason reveres God under the name of T. G. A. D. T. U." 'the motion was lost by a majority of 69 votes, 23 voting in favour and 92 against (see Freemason, London, June 11, 1927).

• SWORD

The sword is in chivalry the ensign or symbol of knighthood. Thus Monstrelet says: "The sons of the Kings of France are knights at the font of baptism, being regarded as the chiefs of Knighthood and they receive, from the cradle the sword which is the Sign thereof." Saint Palaye calls the sword "the most honorable badge of chivalry, and a symbol of the labor the knight was to encounter."

No man was considered a knight until the ceremony of presenting him the sword had been performed; and when this weapon was presented, it was accompanied with the declaration that the person receiving it was thereby made a knight. "The lord or knight," says Saint Palaye, "on the girding on of the sword, pronounced these or similar words: In the name of God, Saint Michael, and Saint George, I make thee a knight."

So important an ensign of knighthood as the sword must have been accompanied with some symbolic meaning, for in the Middle Ages symbolism was referred to on all occasions. Francisco Redi, an Italian poet of the Seventeenth century, gives, in his Bacco in Toscano, an account, from a Latin manuscript, of an investiture with knighthood in the year 1260, which deseribes the Symbolic meaning of all the insignia used on that occasion. or the sword it says: "Let him be girded with the sword as a sign of severity against the devil; and the two edges of the blade signify right and law, that the poor are to be defended from the rich and the weali from the strong." But there is a still better definition of the symbolism of the sword of knighthood in an old manuscript in the library of the London College of Arms to the following effect: "Unto a knight, which is the most honorable office above all other, is given a sword, which is made like unto a crosse for the redemption of mankynde in signifying that like as our Lord God died uppon the crosse for the redemption of mankynde, even so a knight ought to defend the crosse and to overcome and destroie the enemies of the same; and it hath two edges in tokening that with the sword he ought to mayntayne knighthood and justice." Hence in Masonic Templarism we find that this Symbolism has been preserved, and that the sword With which the modern knight is created is said to be endowed with the qualities of justice, fortitude, and merey.

The charge to a Knights Templar, that he should never draw his sword unless convinced of the justice of the cause in w hich he is engaged, nor to sheathe it until his enemies were subdued, finds also its origin in the custom of the Middle Ages. Swords were generally manufactured with a legend on the blade. Among the most common of these legends was that used on swords made in Spain, many examples of which are still to be found in modern collections. That legend is: No me sages sin rason. No me embaines sin honor; that-is, Do not draw me without justice. Do not sheathe me unthout honor. So highly was the sword esteemed in the Middle Ages as a part of a knight's equipment that Special names were given to those of the most celebrated heroes, which have been transmitted to us in the ballads and romances of that period. Thus we have among the warriors of Scandinavia, the following swords and their owners: Foot-breaath, of Thoralf Skolinson; Quern-biter, of King Hako; Balmung, of Siegfried, and Angurvardal, of Frithiof.

To the first two, Longfellow alludes in the following lines:

Quern-biter of Hakom the Good

Wherewith at a stroke he hewed

The millstone through and through

And Foot-breaath of Thoralf the Strong

Were neither so broad nor so long

Nor so true.

And among the Knights of Chivalry we have also known the following swords by their names and their owners: Durandal, of Orlando; Balisardo, of Ruggiero; Colado, of the Cid; Aroun-dight, of Lancelot du Sac; Joyeuse, of Charlemagne, and Excalibur, of King Arthur.

Of the last of these, the well-known legend is, that it was found embedded in a stone as its sheath, on which was an inscription that it could be drawn only by him who was the rightful heir to the throne of Britain After two hundred and one of the strongest knights had essayed in vain, it was at once drawn forth by Arthur, who was then proclaimed King by acelamation. On his deathbed, he ordered it to be thrown into a neighboring lake; but as it fell, an arm issued from the waters, and, seizing it by the hilt, waved it thrice, and then it sank never again to appear. Thare are many other famous swords in these old romances for the knight invariably gave to his sword, as he did to his horse, a name expressive of its qualities or of the deeds which he expected to accomplish with it.

In Freemasonry, the use of the sword as a part of the Masonic clothing is confined to the advanced Degrees and the Degrees of chivalry, when, of course, it is worn as a part of the insignia of knighthood. In the symbolic Degrees its appearance in the Lodge, except as a symbol, is strictly prohibited. The Masonic prints engraved in the eighteenth century, when the sword, at least as late as 1780, constituted a part of the dress of every gentleman, show that it was discarded by the members w hen they entered the Lodge. The official swords of the Tiler and the Pursuivant or Sword-Bearer are the only exceptions. This rule is carried so far, that military men, when visiting a dodges are required to divest themselves of their swords, which are to be left in the Tiler's room.

• SWORD AND TROWEL

See Trowel and Sword

• SWORD-BEARER

An officer in a Commandery of Knights Templar. His station is in the West, on the right of the Standard-Bearer, and when the knights are in line, on the right of the second division. His duty is to receive all orders and signals from the Eminent Commander, and see them promptly obeyed. He is, also, to assist in the protection of the banners of the order. His jewel is a triangle and cross swords.

• SWORD-BEARER, GRAND

Subordinate officer, who is found in many Grand Lodges. Doctor Anderson says, in the second edition of the Constitutions (page 127), that in 1731 the Duke of Norfolk, being then Grand Master, presented to the Grand Lodge of England "the old trusty sword of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, that was wore next by his successor in war the brave Bernard, Duke of Sax-Weimar, with both their names on the blade; which the Grand Master had ordered Brother George Moody, the King's Sword Cutler, to adorn richly with the arms of Norfolk in silver on the scabbard, in order to he the Grand Master's Sword of State in future." At the following Feast, Brother Moody was appointed Sword-Bearer; and the office has ever since existed, and is to be found in almost all the Grand Lodges of this country. Anderson further says that, previous to this donation, the Grand Lodge had no Sword of State, but used one belonging to a private Lodge. It was borne before the Grand Master by the Master of the Lodge to which it belonged, as appears from the account of the procession in 1730. The Grand Sword-Bearer should be appointed by the Grand Masters and it is his duty to carry the Sword of State immediately in front of that oflicer in all processions of the Grand Lodge. In Grand Lodges which have not provided for a Grand Sword-Bearer, the duties of the office are usually performed by the Grand Pursuivant.

• SWORD OF STATE

Among the ancient Romans, on all public occasions, a Lictor, one of the guards or officers attending the chief Roman Magistrates, carried a bundle of rods, sometimes with an ax inserted among them, before the Consul or other magistrate as a token of his authority and his power to punish Criminals. Hence, most probably, arose the custom in the Middle Ages of carrying a naked sword before flings or Chief Magistrates. Thus at the election of the Emperor of Germany, the Elector of Saxony, as Arch-Marshal of the Empire, carried a naked sword before the newly elected Emperor. We find the same practise prevailing in England as early certainly as the reign of Henry III, at whose coronation, in 1236, a sword was carried by the Earl of Chester. It was named Curtane, and, being without a point, was said to be emblematic of the spirit of mercy that should actuate a sovereign.

This sword is known as the Sword of State, and the practise prevailing to the present day, it has always been borne in England in public processions before all Chief Magistrates, from the Monarch of the Realm to the Mayor of the city. The custom was adopted by the Freemasons; and we learn from Dr. James Anderson that, from the time of the Revival, a Sword of State, the property of a private Lodge, was borne by the Master of that Lodge before the Grand Master, until the Grand Lodge acquired one by the liberality of the Duke of Norfolk, which has ever since been borne by the Grand Sword-Bearer.

• SWORD POINTING TO THE NAKED HEART

Thomas Smith Webb says that "the sword pointing to the naked heart demonstrates that justice will, sooner or later, overtake US." The symbol is a modern one; but its adoption was probably suggested by the old ceremony, both in English and in Continental Lodges, and which is still preserved in some places, in which the candidate found himself surrounded by swords pointing at his heart, to indicate that punishment would duly follow his violation of his obligations.

• SWORD, REVOLVING

With the Cherubim, Yahveh stationed at the gale of Eden, "to keep the way of the tree of Life," the lahat ha'hereb hammithhappeteth, meaning the revolving phenomenon of the curved sword, or the flaming blade of the sword which tarns There were two Cherubim, one at each side of the gate. These angels, or winged bulls, did not hold the weapon in their hands, but it was apart, separate from them.

The lahat ha'hereb was endowed with preper motion, or turned upon itself. There was but ones and presumably it was between the Cherubim suspended at a certain height in the air. Professor Lenormant, in speaking of this terrible weapon, states, that "the circumferenec, which was turned fully upon the Spectators could have been full of eyes all around and that when the prophet says 'that they had a circumference and a height that were dreadful,' the second dimension refers to the breadth of their rims," and when advancing with the Cherubim against the irreverent intruder at the forbidden gate, it would strike and cut him in pieces as soon as it should graze him.

The symbolism of this instrument has been fixed by Obly as the Tchakra of India, which is a disk with sharp edges, hollow at the center, which is flungg horizontally, after having been whirled around the fingers. "A weapon for slinging, shaped like a disk, moving horizontally with a gyratory motion, like that of a waterspout, having a hollow centre, that the tips of the fingers can pass through, whence seven divergent rays issue toward a circumference, about which are studded fifty sharp points" (see Cherubim).

• SWORD, TEMPLAR'S

According to the regulations of the Grand Encampment of the United States the sword to be worn by the Knight Templar must have a helmet head or pommel a cross handle, and a metall scabbart. The length from the top of the hilt to the end of the seabbard must be from thirty-four to forty 'inches.

• SWORD, TILER'S

In modern times the implement used by the Tiler is a sword of the ordinary form. This is incorrect. Formerly, and indeed up to a comparatively recent period, the Tiler's sword was wavy in shape, and so made in allusion to the "flaming sword which was placed at the east of the garden of Eden, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life." It was, of course, without a scabbard, because the Tiler's sword should ever be drawn and ready for the defense of his post.

The Taunton Lodge in 1850 buried Brother Davey, their Tiler, and at the conclusion of the Church burial Service, the Provincial Grand Secrctary broke his wand and the Worshipful Master broke the sword of the deceased Tiler, casting the same into the grave with the customary exclamation on such occasions, "Alas, our Brother." This is the editorial answer to a question in the Freemasons Magazine and Masonic Mirror (August 2(), 1863, page 1).

• SWORN BROTHERS

In Latin, Fratres jurati. It was the custom in the Middelle Ages for Soldiers, and especially knights, when going into battle, to engage each other by reciprocal oaths to share the rewards of victory and to defend each other in the fight. Thus Kennet tells us (parochial Antiquities) that in the commencement of the expedition of William of Normandy into England, Robert de Oiley and Roger de Iverio, Fratres jurati, et per Stem et sacramentum confederati, venerunt ad conquestum Anqliae, that is, they came to the conquest of England, as sworn brothers, bound by their faith and an oath. Consequently, When William allotted them an estate as the reward of their military service, they divided it into equal portions, each taking one.

• SYLLABLE

To pronounce the syllables, or only one of the syllables, of a Sacred Word, such as a name of God, was among the Orientalists considered far more reverent than to give to it in all its Syllables a full and continuous utterance. Thus the Hehrews reduced the holy name Jehovah to the syllable Jah; and the Brahmans, taking the initial letters of the three words which expressed the three attributes of the ,Supreme Brahma, as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, made of it the syllable Aum, which, on account of its awful and sacred meaning, they hesitated to pronounce aloud. To divide a word into syllables, and thus to interrupt the sound, either by pausing or by the alternate pronunciation by two persons, was deemed a mark of reverence.

• SYMBOL

A symbol is defined to be a visible sign with which a spiritual feeling, emotion, or idea is connected. It was in this sense that the early Christians gave the name of symbols to all rites, ceremonies, and outward forms which bore a religious meaning; such, for instance, as the cross, and other pictures and images, and even the sacraments and the sacramental elements. At a still earlier period, the Egyptians communicated the knowledge of their esoteric philosophy in mvstic symbols. In fact, man's earliest instruction was by means of symbols. "The first learning of the world," says Doctor Stukely, "consisted chiefly of Symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolic." And the learned Faber remarks that "allegory and personification were peculiarly agreeable to the genius of antiquity, and the simplicity of truth was continually sacrificed at the shrine of poetical decoration."

The word symbol is derived from a Greek verb which signifies to compare one thing with another; and hence a symbol or emblem, for the two words are often used synonymously in Freemasonry, is the expression of an idea derived from the comparison or contrast of some visible object with a moral conception or attribute. Thus the Plumb is a symbol of rectitude; the Level, of equality; the Beehive, of industry. The physical qualities of the Plumb are compared or contrasted with the moral conception of virtue or rectitude of conduct. The Plumb becomes to the Freemason, after he has once been taught its symbolic meaning, forever afterward the visible expression of the idea of rectitude, or uprightness of conduct. To study and compare these visible objects —to elicit from them the moral ideas which they are intended to express—is to make one's self acquainted with the symbolism of Freemasonry.

The objective character of a Symbols which presents something material to the sight and touch, as explanatory of an internal idea, is best calculated to be grasped by the infant missal, whether the infancy of that mind be considered nationally or individually.

Hence, in the first ages of the world, in its infamy, all propositions, theological, political, or Scientific were expressed in the form of symbols. Thus the first religions were eminently symbolical, because, as that great philosophical historians Grote, has remarked, At a time when language was yet in its infancy visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers."

To the man of mature intellect, each letter of the alphabet is the symbol of a certain sound. When we instruct the child in the form and value of these letters, we make the picture of some familiar object the representation of the letter which aids the infantile memory. Thus, when the teacher says, ".A was an Archer," the Archer becomes a symbol of the letter A, just as in after-life the letter becomes the symbol of a sound.

Doctor Barlow (Essays on symbolism i, page 1) says:Symbolical representations of things sacred, were coeval with religion itself as a system of doctrine appealing to sense, and have accompanied its transmission to ourselves from the earliest known period of monumental history. Egyptian tombs and stiles exhibit religious symbols still in use among Christians. Similar forms, with corresponding meanings, though under diffent names, are found among the Indians, and are seen on the monuments of the Assyrians, the Etruscans, and the Creeeks. The Hebrews borrowed much of their early religious symbolism from the Egyptians, their latter from the Babylonians, and through them this symbolical imagery, both verbal and objective, has descended to ourselves. The Egyptian Priests were great proficients in symbolism and so were the Chaldeans, and so were Moses and the Prophets, and the Jewish doctors generally—and so were many of the early fathers of the Church, especially the Greek fathers. Philo of Alexandria was very learned in symbolism and the Evangelist Saint John has made much use of it. The early Christian architects, sculptors, and painters drank deep of Symbolical lore, and reproduced it in their works.

,Squier gives in his Serpent Symbolism in America (page 19) a similar view of the antiquity and the subsequent growth of the use of symbols: In the absence of a written language or forms of expression capable of conveying abstract ideas, we can readily comprehend the necessity, among a primitiv people, of a symbolic system. That symbolism in a great degree resulted from this necessity is very obvious; and that, associated with man's primitive religious systems it was afterwards continued, when in the advanced stage of the human mind the previous necessity no longer existed, is equally undoubted. It thus came to constitute a kind of sacred language, and became invested with an esoteric significance understood only by the few.

In Freemasonry, all the instructions in its mysteries are commullicated in the form of symbols. Founded as a Speculative science, on an operative art, it has taken the working-tools of the professions which it spiritualizes, the terms of architecture, the Temple of Solomon, and everything that is connected with its traditional history and adopting them as Symbols, it teaches its great moral and philosophical lessons by this system of symbolism. But its symbols are not confined to material objects as were the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. Its myths and legends are also, for the most part, symbolic.

Often a legend, unauthenticated by history, distorted by anachronisms, and possibly absurd in its pretensions if viewed historically or as a narrative of actual occurrences, when interpreted as a symbol, is found to impress the mind with some great spiritual and philosophical truth. The legends of Freemasonry are parables, and a parable is only a Spoken symbol. By its utterance, says Adam Clarke, "spiritual things are better understood, and make a deeper impression on the attentive mind " (For a thorough discussion of the subjeet in connection with the Craft, see Doctor Mackey's Symbolism of Freemasonry, revised edition.)

• SYMBOLS, MASONIC

A symbol is some object, design, device, etc., which signifies or suggests some truth, idea, cause, ideal, etc.; what it is in itself is unimportant, because it is not used to call attention to itself but to call attention to that for which it stands; its sole function is thus to call the attention of a man to its meaning because it itself has nothing to say or to teach; and it is used where it is needed or desired that men shall keep certain truths, doctrines, etc., before them at a certain time. Although the two belong to the same general category "of things that point, or signify, or denote," a symbol differs in essence from an emblem.

The latter is itself the thing it stands for, but is only one form or instance of it. A sword is war, because it is a weapon; as an emblem it stands for each and every other weapon, and hence denotes war; a bee-hive is an emblem because it is itself an instance of the power of industriousness. An allegory is a truth, doctrine, idea, ideal, etc., which is told in the form of a story; the story may be oral or may be written down, or it may be enacted like a play the allegories of the Building of the Temple and of the Search for That Which Was Lost are enacted. A rite is an end in itself, does not point to something outside itself, but is enacted for its own sake, and delivers its meaning in the process of enactment. Symbols, emblems, allegories, and rites are as universal as language —no people or period of history has yet been discovered without them; Freemasonry is not peculiar because it uses them, but it is one of the few societies in the modern world which has a teaching for its members and which delivers that teaching solely in the symbolic form. Without any exception each symbol, emblem, allegory, and rite employed in the Degrees (of each of the Five Rites) is in use, or has been in use, outside of Freemasonry; a few of them (the Square, Cirele, Pillars, etc.) have been in use almost without exception by every people in the world, and in every known century. It is meaningless to argue that if some Masonic symbol or rite now employed by Freemasonry is found to have been employed by some people or society elsewhere therefore Freemasonry originated in it; if carried to its logical conclusion this argument results in saying that Freemasonry was originated by everybody, everywhere. Freemasonry did not invent its own symbols; they were here beforehand; it adopted such of them as it required, and employed them for its own purposes, just as it has taken from the English language the words it has needed for its own nomenclature. The only admissible canon or principle of interpretation of symbols is therefore plain: a symbol is a Masonic symbol in the sense that Freemasonry makes use of it; the meaning of the symbol is a Masonic meaning, and it is to be interpreted in the terms of its purpose for Freemasonry. What the same symbol means, or may have meant elsewhere, is irrelevant. The Rite of Circumambulation was practiced by the Brahmins in India 1600 B.C.; it is not used in each of the Three Degrees to teach Brahminism. The religion of Mithraism had a ceremony which was strikingly like the rite of Raising in the Master Mason Degree; that Degree does not teach Mithraism. Freemasonry itself is the interpretation of its own symbols. (For general worlds on symbolism see The Migration of Symbols, by Count Goblet D'alviela; Arehibald Constable & Co.; Westminster; 1894. [He was a Belgian savant; member of the Senate. This is one of the masterpieces on the subject; has chapters on Swastika, Tree of Life, Winged Globes, Caduceus, etc.] Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, by William Durandus; [A classic; deals with ecclesiastical symbolism of Romanesque churches. ] The Romance of Symbolism, by Sidney Heath; F. GiEths; London; 1909. Symbols and Emblems of Early and Medieval Christian Art, by Louisa Twining; John Murray; 1885. Symbolism of the East and West, by Mrs. Murray-Aynsley; George Redway; London; 1900. [Chapters on Sun and Moon; Tau Cross; Sacred Stones; Saered Trees; Swastika, and Arehiteetural Customs; etc.] The Gnostics and Their Remains, by C. W. King; G. P. Putnam's Sons; New York; 1887. Symbolism in Christian Art, by Edward F. Hulme; Swan Sonneschein & Co.; London; and Maemillan; biew York; 1909 [5th ed]. [The author is a leading authority on Medieval subjects.] The Migration of Symbols, by Donald MacKenzie; Alfred A. Knopf; 1926. [Reviewed in The Builder. Not a Masonic book, but written with Masonry in mind.] Anczent Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison; Home University Library, published by Henry Holt & Co.; New York. Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiacfical Architecture, by E. P. Evans; Henry Holt & Co.; IN'evw York; 1906. [Extraordinarily interesting; should be read by Masonic students. Contains much on the Physiologus, an old book, widely read in the Middle Ages, on animals; see artiele on "Bestiaries" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.] Symbolism qf Animals and Birds, by Arthur H. Collins; MeBride Sast & Co.; New York; 1913. Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism, by Maruice H. Farbridge; Kegan Paula French, Trubner & Co.; London; 1925. [In Trubner Oriental Series. Chapters on Acacia; the lion; the eagle; symbolism of numbers; discalceation and desti tution; colors; gematria; etc.] Medieval Italy, by H B. Cotterill; George C. Harrap; London; 1915 [In Great Nation Series; an excellent chapter on mosaiesw two chapters on architecture.] Masonic books on Craft symbolism are numbered by the hundreds; of them the following are representative; Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. Symbolism of Freemasonry, by Albert G. Mackey. Symbolism of the Three Degrees, by Oliver Day Street. Symbolical Masonry, by H. L. Haywood Thoughts Otl Masonic Symbolism, by C. C. Hunt.)

• SYMBOL, COMPOUND

In Doctor Mackey's work on the symbolism of Freemasonry, he has given this name to a species of symbol that is not unusual in Freemasonry, where the symbol is to be taken in a double sense, meaning in its general application one thing, and then in a special application another. An example of this is seen in the symbolism of Solomon's Temple, where, in a general sense, the Temple is viexed as a symbol of that spiritual temple formed by the aggregation of the whole Order, and in which each Freemason is considered as a stone; and, in an individual or special sense, the same Temple is considered as a type of that spiritual temple which each Freemason is directed to erect in his heart.

• SYMBOL OF GLORY

In the old lectures of the eighteenth century, the Blazing Star was called "the glory in the center" because it was placed in the centre of the Floor-Cloth or Tracing-Board, and represented hieroglyphically the glorious name of God. Hence Doctor Oliver has given to one of his most interesting works, which treats of the symbolism of the Blazing Star, the title of the symbol of Glory.

• SYMBOLIC DEGREES

The first three Degrees of Freemasonry, namely, those of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason, are known, by way of distinction, as the Symbolic Degrees. This term is never applied to the Degrees of Mark, Past, and Most Excellent Master, and the Royal Arch, which, as being conferred in a Body called a Chapter, are generally designated as Capitular Degrees; nor to those of Royal and Select Master, which, conferred in a Council, are, by an excellent modern usage, styled Cryptic Degrees, from the crypt or vault which plays so important a part in their ritual. But the term symbolic is exclusively confined to the Degrees conferred in a Lodge of the three primitive Degrees, which Lodge, therefore, whether opened on the First, the Second or the Third Degree, is always referred to as a symbolic Lodge. As this distinctive term is of constant and universal use, it may be not altogether profitless to inquire into its origin and signification.

The germ and nucleus of all Freemasonry is to be found in the three primitive Degrees—The Apprentice, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason. They were at one time, under a modification, however, which included the Royal Arch, the only Degrees known to or practised by the Craft, and hence they are often called Ancient Craft Masonry, to distinguish them from those comparatively modern additions which constitute what are designated as the high degrees, or, by the French, les hautes grades.

The striking peculiarity of these primitive Degrees is that their prominent mode of instruction is by symbols. Not that they are without legends. On the contrary, they have each an abundance of legends; such, for instance, as the details of the building of the Temple; of the payment of wages in the Middle Chamber, or of the construction of the pillars of the Porch. But these legends do not perform any very important part in the constitution of the Degree. The lessons which are communicated to the candidate in these primitive Degrees are conveved, principally, through the medium of symbols, while there is, at least in the working of the Degrees, but little tradition or legendary teaching, with the exception of the great legend of Freemasonry, the Golden Legend of the Order, to be found in the Master's Degree, and which is, itself, a symbol of the most abstruse and solemn signification. But even in this instance, interesting as are the details of the legend, they are only subordinate to the symbol. Hiram the Builder is the profound symbol of manhood laboring for immortality, and all the different points of the legend are simply clustered around it, only to throw out the symbol in bolder relief. The legend is of itself inert — it is the symbol of the Master Workrnan that gives it life and true meaning.

Symbolism is, therefore, the prevailing characteristic of these primitive Degrees; and it is because all the science and philosophy and religion of Ancient Craft Masonry is thus concealed from the profane but unfolded to the initiates in symbols, that the first three Degrees which comprise it are said to be symbolic. Now, nothing of this kind is to be found in the Degrees above and beyond the third, if we except the Royal Arch, which, however, as we have already intimated, was, quite likely, originally a part of Ancient Craft Masonry, and was unnaturally torn from the Master's Degree, of which it, as every Masonic student knows, constituted the complement and consummation. Take, for example, the intermediate Degrees of the American Chapter, Such, for instance, as the Mark and Most Excellent Master. Here we find the symbolic feature ceasing to predominate, and the traditional or legendary taking its place. It is true that in these capitular Degrees the use of symbols is not altogether abandoned. This could not well be, for the symbol constitutes the very essence of Freemasonry. The symbolic element is still to be discovered in these Degrees, but only in a position subordinate to legendary instruction. As an illustration, let us consider the Keystone in the Mark Master's Degree. Now, no one will deny that this is, strictly speaking, a symbol, and a very important and beautiful one, too. It is a symbol of a fraternal covenant between those who are engaged in the common search after Divine Truth. But, in the role or part which it plays in the ritual of this Degree, the symbol, however beautiful and appropriate it may be, is in a manner lost sight of, and the keystone derives almost all its importance and interest from the traditional history of its construction, its architectural design, and its fate. It is as the subject of a legend, and not as a symbol, that it attracts attention.

Now, in the Third or Master's Degree we find the Trowel, which is a symbol of almost precisely the same import as the Keystone. They both refer to a Masonic Covenant. But no legend, no tradition, no history, is connected with the Trowel. It presents itself simply and exclusively as a symbol. Hence we learn that symbols do not in the capitular, as in the primitive, Degrees of Freemasonry strike the eye, and inform the mind, and teach the heart, in every part of the Lodge, and in every part of the ceremonial initiation. On the contrary, the capitular Degrees are almost altogether founded on and composed of a series of events in Masonic history. Each of them has attached to it some tradition or legend which it is the design of the Degree to illustrate, and the memory of which is preserved in its ceremonies and instructions.

That most of these legends are themselves of symbolic signification is not denied. But this is their interior sense. In their outward and ostensible meaning, they appear before us simply as legends. To retain these legends in the memory of Freemasons appears to have been the primary design of the establishment of the higher Degrees, and as the information intended to be communicated in these Degrees is of a historical character, there can of course be but little room for symbols or for symbolic instruction, the profuse use of which would rather tend to an injury than to a benefit, by complicating the purposes of the ritual and confusing the mind of the aspirant. The celebrated French writer Ragon, objects to this exclusive application of the term symbolic to the first three Degrees as a sort of unfavorable criticism on the higher Degrees, and as if implying that the latter are entirely devoid of the element of symbolism.

But he has mistaken the true import and meaning of the application. It is not because the higher or capitular and cryptic Degrees are altogether without symbols—for such is not the ease—that the term symbolic is withheld from them, but because symbolic instruction does not constitute their predominating characteristic, as it does of the first three Degrees. Hence the Freemasonry taught in these three primitive Degrees is very properly called Symbolic Freemasonry, and the Lodge in which this Freemasonry is taught is known as a Symbolic Lodge.

• SYMBOLIC FREEMASONRY

The Freemasonry that is concerned with the first three Degrees in all the Rites. This is the technical meaning. But in a more general sense, Symbolic Freemasonry is that Masonry, wherever it may be found, whether in the primary or in the high Degrees, in which the lessons are communicated by symbols (see Symbolic Degrees).

• SYMBOLIC LECTURES

The lectures appropriated to the First, Second, and Third Degrees are sometimes called Symbolic Lectures; but the term is more properly applied to any lecture which treats of the meaning of Masonic symbols, in contradistinction to one which discusses only the history of the Order, and which would, therefore, be called a Historical Lecture. But the English Freemasons have a lecture called the Symbolical Lecture, in which is explained the forms, symbols, and ornaments of Royal Arch Masonry, as well as its rites and ceremonies.

• SYMBOLIC LODGE

A Lodge of Master Masons, with the Fellow Craft and Apprentice Lodge worked under its Constitution, is called a Symbolic Lodge, because in it the Symbolie Degrees are conferred (see Symbolic Degrees).

• SYMBOLIC MACHINERY

Machinery is a term employed in epic and dramatic poetry to denote some agency introduced by the poet to serve some purpose or accomplish some event. Faber, in treating of the Apocalypse, speaks of "a patriarchal scheme of symbolical machinery derived most plainly from the events of the Dehlge, and borrowed, with the usual perverse misapplication, by the contrivers of paganism, but which has since been reclaimed by Christianity to its proper use." Doctor Oliver thinks that this "scheme of symbolical machinery" was "the primitive Freemasonry, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." But, without adopting this questionable hypothesis, it must be admitted that Freemasonry, in seenue representations sometimes used in its initiations, has, like the epic poets, and drama tints, and the old hierophants, availed itself of the use of symbolic machinery.

• SYMBOLISM, SCIENCE OF

The science which is engaged in the investigation of the meaning of symbols, and the application of their interpretation to moral, religious, and philosophical instruction. In this sense, Freemasonry is essentially a Science of Symbolism. The English lectures define Freemasonry to be "a peculiar system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." The definition would be more correct were it in these words: Freemasonry is a system of morality developed and inculcated by the science of symbolism. It is this peculiar character as a symbolic institution, this entire adoption of the method of instruction by symbolism, which gives its whole identity to Freemasonry and has caused it to differ from every other association that the ingenuity of man has devised. It is this that has bestowed upon it that attractive form which has always secured the attachment of its disciples and its own perpetuity.

The Roman Catholic Church is, perhaps, the only contemporaneous institution which continues to cultivate, in any degree, the beautiful system of symbolism. But that which, in the Roman Catholic Church, is, in a great measure, incidental, and the fruit of development, is, in Freemasonry, the very life-blood and soul of the Institution, born with it at its birth, or, rather, the germ from which the tree has sprung, and still giving it support, nourishment, and even existence. Withdraw from Freemasonry its symbolism, and you take from the body its soul, leaving behind nothing but a lifeless mass of effete matter, fitted only for a rapid decay. Since, then, the science of symbolism forms so important a part of the system of Freemasonry, it will be well to commence any discussion of that subject by an investigation of the nature of symbols in general.

There is no science so ancient as that of symbolism, and no mode of instruction has ever been so general as was the symbolic in former ages. "The first learning in the world," says the great antiquary, Doctor Stukely, "consisted chiefly of symbols. The wisdom of the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster, Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolic." The learned Faber remarks, that "allegory and personification were peculiarly agreeable to the genius of antiquity, and the simplicity of truth was continually sacrificed at the shrine of poetical decoration." In fact, man's earliest instruction was by symbols. The objective character of a symbol is best calculated to be grasped by the infant mind, whether the infancy of that mind be considered nationally or individually Hence, in the first ages of the world in its infancy, all propositions, theological, political, or scientific were expressed in the form of symbols. Thus the first religions were eminently symbolical, because, as that great philosophical historian, Grote, has remarked, "At a time when language was yet in its infaney, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers."

Even in the very formation of language, the medium of communication between man and man, and which must hence have been an elementary step in the progress of human improvement, it was found necessary to have recourse to symbols, for words are only and truly certain arbitrary symbols by which and through which we give an utterance to our ideas. The construction of language was, therefore, one of the first products of the science of symbolism. We must constantly bear in mind this fact of the primary existence and predominance of symbolism in the earliest times, when we are investigating the nature of the ancient religions, with which the history of Freemasonry is so intimately connected. The older the religion, the more the symbolism abounds. Modern religions may convey their dogmas in abstract propositions; ancient religions always conveyed them in symbols.

Thus there is more symbolism in the Egyptian religion than in the Jewish, more in the Jewish than in the Christian, more in the Christian than in the Mohammedan, and, lastly, more in the Roman than in the Protestant. But symbolism is not only the most ancient and general, but it is also the most practically useful, of sciences. We have already seen how actively it operates in the early stages of life and of society.

We have seen how the first ideas of men and of nations are impressed upon their minds by means of symbols. It was thus that the ancient peoples were almost wholly educated. "In the simpler stages of society," says one writer on this subject, "mankind can be instructed in the abstract knowledge of truths only by symbols and parables. Hence we find most heathen religions becoming mythic or explaining their mysteries by allegories, or instructive incidents. Nay, God Himself, knowing the nature of the creatures formed by him, has condescended, in the earlier revelations that He made of Himself, to teach by symbols; and the greatest of all Teaehers instructed the multitudes by parables. The great exemplar of the ancient philosophy and the grand archetype of modern philosophy were alike distinguished by their possessing this faculty in a high degree, and have told us that man was best instructed by similitudes." Such is the system adopted in Freemasonry for the development and inculcation of the great religious and philosophical truths, of which it was, for so many years, the sole conservator. And it is for this reason that we have already remarked, that any inquiry into the symbolic character of Freemasonry, must be preceded by an investigation of the nature of symbolism in general, if we would properly appreciate its particular use in the organization of the Masonic Institution.

• SYNDICATION OF LODGES

A term used in France, in 1773, by the Schismatic Grand Orient during its contests with the Grand Lodge, to denote the fusion of several Lodges into one. The word was never introduced into English Freemasonry, and has become obsolete in France.

• SYNOD OF SCOTLAND

In 1757, the Associate Synod of Seceders of Scotland adopted an Act, concerning what they called the Mason Oath, in which it is declared, that all persons who shall refuse to make such revelations as the Kirk Sessions may require, and to promise to abstain from all future connection with the Order, "shall be reputed under scandal, and incapable of admission to sealing ordinances." In consequence of this Act, passed so long ago, the sect of Seceders, of which there are a few in the United States of America, continue to be at the present day inveterate enemies of the Masonic Institution.

• SYRIA

A country of Asia Minor lying on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. To the Freemason, it is associated with the legendary history of his Order in several interesting points, especially in reference to Mount Lebanon, from whose forests was derived the timber for the construction of the Temple. The modern Templar will view it as the scene of the contests waged during the Crusades by the Christian knights with their Saracen adversaries. In modern Syria, Freemasonry has been slow to find a home. Lodges in the country have long survived at the City of Beyrout, which has had two—Palestine Lodge, No. 415, which was instituted by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, May 6, 1861, and the Lodge Le Liban, by the Grand Orient of France, January 4, 1869. Morris says (Freemasonry in the Holy Land, page 216) that "the Order of Freemasonry is not in a condition satisfactory to the members thereof, nor creditable to the great cause in which the Fraternity are engaged."

• SYRIAN RITE

A religious seet which had its origin in Syria, and which was anciently comprehended in the Patriarchates of Antioch and of Jerusalem. It was an exceedingly flourishing system. Before the end of the fourth century it numbered one hundred and nineteen distinct Sees, with a population of several millions. The liturgy is known as the liturgy of Saint James.

• SYSTEM

Lenning defines a system of Freemasonry to be the doctrine of Freemasonry as exhibited in the Lodge government and Lodge work or ritual. The definition is not, perhaps, satisfactory. In Freemasonry, a system is a plan or scheme of doctrines intended to develop a particular view as to the origin, the design, and the character of the Institution. The word is often used as synonymous with Rite, but the two words do not always express the same meaning. A system is not always developed into a Rite, or the same system may give birth to two or more different Rites. Doctor Oliver established a system founded on the literal acceptance of almost all the legendary traditions, but he never invented a Rite. Ramsay and Hund both held the same system as to the Ternplar origin of Freemasonry; but the Rite of Ramsay and the Rite of Strict Observance are very different. The system of Schröder and that of the Grand Lodge of England do not essentially vary, but there is no similarity between the York Rite and the Rite of Schröder. Whoever in Freemasonry sets forth a connected series of doctrines peculiar to himself invents a system. He may or he may not afterward fabricate a Rite. But the Rite would be only a consequence, and not a necessary one, of the system.

• SYSTYLE

An arrangement of columns in which the intercolumniation or separation is equal to the diameter of the column.

See also

• En:Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
• En:Albert Mackey
• Albert Mackey
• En: MACKEY - A
• En: MACKEY - B
• En: MACKEY - C
• En: MACKEY - E
• En: MACKEY - F
• En: MACKEY - G
• En: MACKEY - H
• En: MACKEY - I
• En: MACKEY - J
• En: MACKEY - K
• En: MACKEY - L
• En: MACKEY - M
• En: MACKEY - N
• En: MACKEY - O
• En: MACKEY - P
• En: MACKEY - Q
• En: MACKEY - R
• En: MACKEY - T
• En: MACKEY - U
• En: MACKEY - V
• En: MACKEY - W
• En: MACKEY - X
• En: MACKEY - Y
• En: MACKEY - Z

Links

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