s. d. 70 14 0 14 15 0 4 18 11 0 1 6 154 4 10 £244 12 9 The foregoing sufficiently demonstrates that in every branch of its undertakings the Lodge has been successful. But there is one drawback to our general satisfaction, viz., the large amount of Arrears Outstanding, in all £115 11s. Od. Of this total only £11 7s. Od. is due from various members in England, and much of this has only lately been contracted, and will doubtless come in in the course of a post We freely acknowledge that it is rather a trouble to or two; the remainder is from the Colonies and abroad. remit so small a sum as our annual subscription, from say the interior of Africa, and that the very insignificance of the amount leads to carelessness; but brethren should in fairness remember that their membership actually costs us money. In any ordinary Lodge a brother in arrear of his dues costs the Lodge practically nothing-at most 6d. a year for postage of the summonses; in ours he receives three numbers of the Transactions, Library Catalogue slips, and the St. John's Card, all of which cost money to produce; whilst the postage alone for the Colonies cannot be put down at less than 5s. a member per annum. In spite of the large amount outstanding, the Lodge has paid its way, and placed £22 15s. 2d. to the General Fund. Some proportion of the arrears will possibly prove unrecoverable. The population Our transactions are now in our Colonies is a floating one, and several packages have been returned through the dead letter office; but the greater part of what is due will doubtless be paid in the course of time. so large and so widely spread that we must be prepared for a certain percentage of bad debts annually, although a little more consideration on the part of defaulting members would avoid this disagreeable For the Audit Committee, necessity. S. C. PRATT, W.M. Two Grand Lodges, one District Grand Lodge, two private Lodges, and thirty-nine brethren were elected members of the Correspondence Circle, raising the total of intrants to 795. BRO. R. F. GOULD read the following paper : MASONIC SYMBOLISM. ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MASONIC -I find that HE Secretary having called upon me to read the paper which has long stood in my name "On the Degrees of Pure and Ancient Freemasonry in order to make myself generally understood, it will be desirable that I should lay before you in the first instance, what I may venture to term a preliminary But in the lecture of this thesis, which will therefore be proceeded with. evening my object is two-fold. I wish to lay a sure foundation for a future inquiry into the early Ritual and Ceremonial, which prevailed under the Grand Lodge of England; and there is a stronger motive still for the method of treatment I have thought it advisable to adopt. are, that The inaugural addresses of the two brethren who have successively followed me in the chair of this Lodge, seem to me to reflect pretty accurately the opinions of a portion of our members from whom much is expected in the near future. These the domain of Ancient, as distinguished from that of Modern Masonry, has been very strangely neglected, and that if we really wish to enlist the sympathy and interest of scholars and men of intelligence, in the special labours of the Lodge, we must make at least a resolute attempt to partially lift the veil, by which the earlier history of our Art or Science is obscured. It is almost unnecessary to mention, to the brethren I am now addressing, that the as here applied to Masonry, are used in their adjectives "Ancient" and "Modern ordinary acceptation-that is, by members of our own Lodge; or to be precise, that by the Ancient Masonry,' is to be understood the history of the Craft before, and by expression that of "Modern Masonry," the history of the Craft after, the era of Grand Lodges. The line of demarcation between them being therefore drawn at the year 1717. 66 Above that line, and reaching back to the fourteenth century, are to be found our written traditions, and whether our Symbolical traditions are entitled to take rank by their side, I shall discuss generally, and whether any place above the line can be assigned to them at all, I shall discuss specially, in the body of my paper. By this I mean, that while putting before you some speculations with regard to the remote past of our Society, which are not inconsistent with the shreds of evidence that have come down to us, these are subsidiary to my main design, which is, to satisfy your minds, that beyond all reasonable doubt the essentials of the Three Craft Degrees must have existed before the formation of the first Grand Lodge-that of England-in 1717. More than this, I shall not seek to establish, though I hope at the close of my lecture, the inclination of your judgment may be in the direction of my own, which is that the balance of probability is in favour of as early an origin being attributed to our symbolical as to our written traditions. But if there should prove to be, at the close of the discussion which will follow this paper, anything at all approaching a consensus of opinion that the ceremonial of Masonry pre-dates the era of Grand Lodges, a highly important object will have been attained. Scholars and antiquaries take but a languid interest-there is no use in disguising it-in the history of Modern Masonry. They do not believe that the system of Masonry, as understood by the founders of the first Grand Lodge, is capable of indefinite expansion. Degrees, in their judgment, cannot be multiplied ad infinitum. But the history and origin of Ancient Masonry are regarded by them in quite a different manner. These, they are not only willing but eager to study and investigate, yet an unwelcome doubt obtrudes itself which checks, if it does not wholly dissipate, the ardour of their research. Conjointly with the old MS. Constitutions, which are of undoubted antiquity, the symbolical teaching in our Lodges-though possessing a remoteness of origin less assured -has a peculiar fascination for all genuine votaries of archæology. Here, however, the doubt referred to, creeps in, and the scholar or antiquary who has a longing to trace the antiquity of our symbolism, is checked by similar reflections to those which occurred to Gibbon, who kept back an hypothesis he had framed with regard to the real secret of the Ancient Mysteries, "from an apprehension of discovering what never existed;" and to the elder Disraeli, who much in the same way, excused his imperfect speculations with regard to the shadowy and half-mythical Rosicrucians. But if the Symbolism of Masonry, or a material part of it, can be proved with reasonable certainty to ante-date the year 1717, the doubt, upon which I have enlarged, will disappear, and with it we may venture to hope, the present disinclination on the part of really competent investigators, to extend their researches into the only field of inquiry-the domain of Ancient Masonry-which offers any prospect whatever of rewarding the patient student of our antiquities, by a partial revelation of the origin, and by the recovery of some portion at least of the lost learning of the fraternity. Before, however, proceeding with my main argument, let me introduce a few historical data, which if kindly kept in mind, will give a better grasp of the very complicated subject I have to deal with in this paper. It is well known, that the first Grand Lodge, that of England, was founded by four London Lodges in 1717; also, that by students of the Craft, it is customary to speak of the Masonry which existed before that date as Ancient, and of the Masonry which followed afterwards as Modern. The Grand Lodge of England pursued the even tenor of its way, without much variety occurring, until the year 1721, which is the next date I shall ask you to carry in your recollection. In this year two important things happened. First of all, a great nobleman, the Duke of Montagu, was elected Grand Master, and the Society rose at a single bound into notice and esteem. Secondly, Mr. James Anderson, a graduate of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and who was then a Presbyterian Minister in London, was selected by the Grand Master and the Grand Lodge as the most competent person to adjust, as it were, the Masorry of Ancient times upon a Modern basis. The following is an extract from the minutes of Grand Lodge, 29th September, 1721 : -"His Grace's Worship and the Lodge finding fault with all the copies of the Old Gothic Constitutions, order'd Brother James Anderson, A.M., to digest the same in a new and better method." The Constitutions referred to were certain old documents, usually in roll or scroll form, containing the Legend of the Craft and a Code of Ancient Regulations, both of which it was the custom in old days to read over to the operative Masons on their first admission into the Lodge. By the aid of these MS. Constitutions, Anderson compiled the first "Book of Constitutions," which was published in 1723. This work contained a quantity of "Regulations," No. XIII. of which runs as follows:-" Apprentices must be admitted Masters and Fellow Craft only here [i.e., in the Grand Lodge] unless by a dispensation." Transactions of the Lodge Quatuor Coronati. This usage, however, was again varied by the Grand Lodge, on November 25th, 1725, "That the Master of Each Lodge, with the consent of his Wardens when it was ordained, and the Majority of the Brethren, being Masters, may make Masters at their discretion." From the foregoing it will appear that only two degrees (or distinct ceremonies) were recognised by the Grand Lodge of England in 1723, Apprentice, and Fellow Craft or Master, the two latter being convertible terms; also, that in 1725, the restriction was removed and that" Masters could be made by private Lodges at discretion. The period embraced by some of the figures I have given you, viz., from 1717 to to 1723, has been styled the Epoch of Transition, because in the opinion of many leading authorities, the system of Masonry we now possess (or in other words, the three degrees of pure and Ancient Masonry, as we are accustomed to call them), was then manufactured or concocted. Against this view, however, we find arrayed, the conviction of another set of authorities, who are firm believers in Masonic degrees, and discredit the notion that any alterations were made by the Grand Lodge of England, in the secrets of Masonry-except in what may be termed non-essentials, or to speak with more precision, in the method adopted of imparting them. Thus, there are two theories or schools of thought with regard to the degrees, or to use an expression I prefer, the Symbolism of Masonry, a wider term, and one which will cover everything done or practised in the Lodges at a later period than the so-called Epoch of Transition (1717-23), and for which (it is alleged on one side) no equivalent is to be found. in the doings and practices of the Lodges in existence prior to 1717. Each of these views or theories has its supporters, and to whichever side the argument may for the moment seem to preponderate, we cannot be too careful to recollect— that there is evidence to the contrary. The number of authorities, indeed, by which either of these two beliefs is upheld, is so evenly balanced, that there is no middle course between reading the testimony on one side, and despising the other so thoroughly, as to refrain from ever looking at it, or to do as I shall propose to you in the present instance, that is, to give each side a patient hearing. To-night, indeed, I can only put before you one branch of the case, namely the arguments which I think may be adduced in favour of the antiquity of degrees, or to use the wider But they will go far I trust, towards expression already adopted, of Masonic Symbolism. covering the whole ground, and if not, in the general reply to which I shall be entitled at the close of the discussion, I will do my best to grapple fairly with any counter-arguments which may be advanced in support of the other side of the question. 66 men 66 own. There your By this method of treatment, I shall be able to present you-not so much with my personal conclusions, as that with what will serve as an ultimate basis for as many men, so many opinions"—and if for is an old saying, Quot homines, tot sententiæ, you read "lecturers," it stands to reason, that while every person who reads a paper before you, might give a different opinion if you invited an expression of his individual judgment or crotchets upon a question in dispute-on the other hand you would be always sure to evoke some useful information, calculated to assist you in arriving at an independent conclusion, if you were to ask what could be said both on the one side and on the other. 66 Of the important part played by the Rev. James Anderson in the moulding of new lines," I shall have Ancient Masonry, 1721-23, upon what are averred to have been more to say, when I get to the body of the lecture, but I ask you to carefully note the fact, that when, in 1721, it was designed to consolidate the "Constitutions of Ancient and Modern Masonry," the task of doing so was confided to a Scotsman, and who as there is good ground for believing, had been received into the Society while a resident in Aberdeen. It may now be convenient to formulate in words, the precise question which will constitute my main contention this evening. It is this: Is the Symbolism of Masonry an inheritance derived from the old Masons who flourished before the era of the Grand Lodges; or has it been borrowed from the Rosicrucians or others, after 1717 ? There is also a secondary contention (or series of speculations) to which I have already referred, viz., that the Symbolism of Masonry, is very old indeed-much older than 1 Grand Lodge Minutes. 2 Although the Grand Lodge Records are silent as to the exact date on which three degrees (or distinct ceremonies) were recognised by the Governing Body, it can be proved aliunde, that they were wrought in London in 1724, and probably earlier. B |