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Short Talk Bulletin Vol 05 No 03
SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.V March, 1927 No.3
THE THINGS I KNOW
by: Joseph Fort Newton, Litt. D.
Synopsis of an address delivered before the Masonic Service
Association Annual Meeting, assembled in Chicago, Il, November 17,
1926.
Three times in my life I have had a very wonderful dream; each time
it has come back with an amazing vividness, born, on each occasion,
of an hour of inner struggle and crisis. Always it is a vision of a
great cathedral, built in the ancient form of a cross, stately,
imposing, piteous; an old great home of the human soul, the shrine of
faith, fellowship and hope. It is Gothic in its architecture, that
form of architecture created and glorified by the genius and history
of Freemasonry, its achievement and its monument; the most eloquent
of all forms as embodying our own spirit and attempting to make God
eloquent among men. I can see in my dream, or my vision, the lift of
its pillars, and the leap of its arches, and its great, glorious
dome, and in that framework always this vision has come. I have
never been able to see the Altar or the Chancel distinctly, because
of a very blinding light. No face, but only the sweep of a garment,
vast, white, but I know who is there at the Altar, and the Chancel.
I do not hear a voice, but somehow know what is being said. Once
again, in that framework of Gothic glory, He is speaking the words
that He spoke of old, on the mountain and by the sea. Somehow, I
don't know how, I know who it is and what he is saying.
Next to the Temple and the speaker is the audience gathered there,
the most extraordinary of which any man ever dreamed. All the great
minds and prophets of the older world are there. Moses, the mighty
law giver, the great legislator of the human race is there.
Confucius, with his slant eyes and his queue, who dreamed of the
superior man, the ideal, to which all good men labor! Buddha, all
pitiful, whose religion is the most majestic symphony of melancholy
in the whole compass of human history! They are there. Plato, a man
of angel mind, idealist, father of philosophy and of the theology,
with the greatest, sweetest and most luminous spirit that have ever
crossed our human pathway; by his side Aristotle, father if science,
patient, exact investigator, who anticipated, in flashes of insight,
so many things that have been verified both in science and
philosophy. The company of prophets, from the days of Isaiah, with
his golden voice, on down; they are all there;
I know them and see them, on into our own time, and they are very
vivid to me. Very distinct is the face of Emerson. I see it only in
profile, a finely chiseled face, in which the genius of New England
took form. What a company it is! I could not name all of them, but
Voltaire, who built a little Temple over which he inscribes, "To the
Glory of God," is there. And while the speaker utters once more,
with that voiceless voice, the truths which are the Magna Carta of
the spiritual life of mankind, I see all those in that Temple nodding
assent and saying, each in his own heart, Amen, Amen, Amen.
Such is my dream, my brethren. It came, by the mercy of God, when I
was only a lad in Texas, and again, in an hour of crisis in Iowa,
blessed to me and never-to-be-forgotten, for the friendships of a
lifetime formed there, and for the confidence of the Grand Lodge of
Iowa; and once in London, in the wild, dark, confused and terrifying
days of World War. Always with increasing vividness that dream has
blessed my life. It is a vision of unity, as you will discover. It
leads to the ends of the earth and the limits of human history. It
includes all religions and all races in its embrace. Out of that
vision have grown certain great convictions which, like the rock
ribs that hold the earth together, hold my life.
First, that all just men, all devout men, all spiritually minded men,
are everywhere of one religion. They are trying to say the same
thing, each in his own tongue, with his own accent and emphasis,
speech that each has colored by his own environment, the degree of
his own spiritual development. All are fundamental participators in
one common spiritual life, which they seek to interpret.
That conviction is so fundamental in my life that it makes me utterly
indifferent to small things that seem to divide men into different
religions of different sects. Some of my brethren in the lodge and
in the church, not knowing what I am telling you, misunderstand many
things. They call me an "Ecclesiastical polygamist," for example,
meaning one who belongs to many churches. Yes, exactly; because, in
the light of this vision, to me there is only one church, universal
and eternal. All good men belong to it. The different religious
communions to me are like the different rooms in one house, and the
doors are all open. I walk from room to room in my Father's House.
I hold fellowship with all alike. Perhaps I may live long enough to
belong officially to every church, on principle, even long enough to
have my vision understood.
My second great conviction is that all just men, all devout men, are
not only trying to say the same thing, but they are trying to do the
same things, to define faith, to refine and purify the mind of
humanity and build it up into righteousness and moral intelligence,
and honest good will. They have the same ideals. If Confucius
speaks of the Superior man, he means what we mean by the Christian
man, Christ. It is the one ideal that God has planted in the dream
and hope of mankind; the one great moral and spiritual enterprise
going in the world. It is a great consolation, it is a great
reinforcement, to realize that fact. It falls over one like a
consecration, and gives strength.
The third conviction is, since men are trying to say the same thing,
and trying to do the same thing, the greatest things they must
finally learn to do together. You can see, then, the philosophy of
my interest in The Masonic Service association and the Federal
Council of Churches. I have the honor to be a member of the
committee on direction of the Federal Council on Churches of America,
and also to be Educational Director of The Masonic Service
association. It is extremely interesting to see the same thing going
on among the religious communions and the Grand Lodges. They are
trying to learn how to do the same things together., things which can
only be done together. The same objection, the same criticism, the
same fears and misgivings are expressed in the Federal Council as in
this Association. Some of the great religious communions will not
belong at all to the Federal Council of Churches. A Distinguished,
brilliant member of a great church said in an address a few weeks
ago; "The Federal Council will either collapse or become a Super
Church." It sounded very familiar to me! Somewhere I have heard a
rumor of that kind said about this Association - that it would either
collapse or become a Super Grand Lodge! Well, there is no more idea
of a Super Grand Lodge in our minds than there is in the Federal
Council of Churches to make a Super-Church. One is as undesirable as
the other.
It is interesting that some of our churches are in it with one foot.
My Church, for example, with one foot, tentatively, experimentally.
The Episcopal Communion will cooperate on International Affairs and
with the Committee of International Good Will, but no further than
that. So there are some lodges in America who will cooperate with
us, and use all out literature, and all our material and all our
machinery, but they won't use them in a common undertaking. It is
amusing. To watch this practice and procedure going on adds to the
joy of life. "But it is going on!" It is just as inevitable as
anything can be. The very necessities of the situation demand a
united religious communion, in fellowship, at least, and in work, for
the things that need to be done can be done in no other way. War
cannot be abolished by stupid sectarianism.
Pestilence, famine, war! These three are the greatest evils, and the
worst of these is war. Science has killed one pestilence after
another. They lie like dead snakes by the side of the road.
Commerce and intercommunication make it possible to send relief from
one part of the world to the other very quickly. Only a renewed
spiritual life can kill the spirit of strife in the hearts of men and
so purify them as to make war impossible. It will take the whole
religion, united, purified and renewed to do that.
But, this afternoon I am thinking of that Gothic Cathedral which
Freemasonry built, as the framework, the shrine, the home of the
religious life. For we are builders. This is what we are here to
build, a Temple, a House not made with human hands. It will tower
into the heavens, but it is a Temple. It is the great landmark of
Freemasonry, that Temple. What are the foundations of it?
There are three things that I know about Freemasonry, not much else.
I studied upon it many years, starting my study in the great library
of the Grand Lodge of Iowa. But there are three fundamental things
that I do positively know.
The first is that man was made for righteousness. He can never be a
man, he can never be happy until he is a righteous man. The mystery
of moral life comes back again and again as the profoundest mystery
of al life. I find it here written in my own heart; what the dear
Quakers call "A Stop In The Mind," something that arrests men and
compels them to pass a moral judgment upon my acts and my thoughts.
Where it came from I do not know.
I have my beliefs. It is upon what I know that I build my beliefs.
But I do know I have this mystery of the moral sense in my own being.
It is here. I did not create it. I commands me. The profoundest
mystery to me is not that I do wrong, as all of us do wrong, but that
there is something that brings me to judgment for doing wrong,
something within myself, that awful whisper of moral law. I
understand what the Great thinker meant when he said that there were
two things that overwhelmed him, the still depth of a starlit night,
and the awful moral law within.
When I try to think, when I try to interpret the meaning of that
great fact in the life of my fellow man, then I have the cornerstone
of all theology, of all understanding of life. You can push it back
just as far as you please. You can say, as some will want to say,
that this whisper within me is the echo of an old racial memory and
experience. No doubt!. But whence came the first bias of man
towards righteousness, the first sense and command within himself
that he must be a righteous man? Whence did the voice of that
command come?
What is true of humanity is true of myself. It can never be happy
until it attains righteousness. He has a choice and an ability to
choose the right and refuse the wrong; or to choose the wrong and
refuse the right. One involves the other.
I am aware that there prevails in our time the fatalistic philosophy
which tells us that we are no more responsible for our thoughts and
acts than we are for the shape of our heads and the color of our
eyes. That philosophy is plausible, but in my heart I know it to be
false. I am not a machine. I am no organism.
That is the first fundamental thing that I know about Freemasonry.
And the second thing, that not only is man made for righteousness,
but man is made for man. He cannot attain the richest character, the
moral personality apart from his fellow man. Talent may develop in
solitude. Character is the creation of fellowship and of fraternity.
This ancient and honorable fraternity is built upon this fact, that
we are made one for the other; that our lives fit one into another
and are woven together to make a Divine fabric, a cloth of gold.
This fact unites us in a temple of vision. We are made one for
another. Muhammad was right when he said if man would not help man
the end of the world had come. The end of the human world has
certainly arrived when man refuses to aid and assist his fellow man.
Here is the basis of our beautiful doctrine of brotherly love, relief
and truth because we can never know the truth until we know it
together. There are some things we may know in isolation, but we
cannot know the highest truth alone. We can only learn it together.
It is by practicing brotherhood that we learn to know God.
Finally, the third thing. Not only is man made for righteousness and
man made for man, but man is made for God. His spirit is formless
and alone, even in the warmest fellowship, until at last together we
find the source from whence we come, the light from whence flashes
that spark of moral law and spiritual vision within us, the veiled
kindness of the Father of all men. One of the greatest minds of any
time put it in an unforgettable way when he said; "Lord, Thou Hast
Made Us For Thyself, And Our Hearts Are Restless Until They Rest In
Thee." I am speaking about God, in a Fraternity, the first great
universal landmark of which is God!
Three things which appeal to me in Masonry are, first, its
simplicity. All supremely great things, like all supremely great
men, are simple. Turn the pages of history and call the names of
Martin Van Buren, of Benjamin Disraeli, of Talleyrand! You feel that
you are in the presence of great men, but something arrests you and
prevents you from believing those men are supremely great. They had
great characteristics. They were past masters of the art and wise in
the manipulations of diplomacy. But turn another page and read the
names of Washington and Lincoln, and instantly you feel that those
two belonged to a different order of men. They are supremely great,
in the open and in the sunlight; and sublimely simple. So it is with
Masonry. There are many fraternities in the world. They have great
characteristics. But to me the outstanding glory of Masonry is the
simplicity of its symbolism, of its faith and of its philosophy. As
I have tried to state it, man is made for righteousness, man is made
for man, and man is made for God. You cannot go beyond that, or
above it. It is something to think about through a whole lifetime,
as a scheme of philosophy and of faith.
Second, in all my Masonic life, as a student or a teacher of Masonry,
and a worker in its behalf; it has been always in my heart to use
Masonry as a wand of blessing and never as a weapon of battle. It is
intended to make men friends, to bring men of all types of
temperament, antecedents and training together; to discover their
brotherhood and make them builders of a purer world. The temptation
is very great sometimes, for good men and true, to use Masonry as a
weapon of battle. But we must never do it. I refuse to do it. It
is too great. It is too beautiful. It is too Holy!
Third, to me Masonry is one of the forms of the Divine life among
men. It has come to us from a long, long past; bringing symbolisms
to understand which is to understand the meaning of life; what it is
to be a man and how to be a righteous man; how best to serve our
fellow-man and, therefore, best serve God. It is not a religion, but
it is religion in its very essence, genius and spirit.
Its simplicity then, its dignity, and its spirituality; these things,
with the vision I have told you, sustain me in all that try to do,
and permit me to forget the incredible pettiness of mind that we
sometimes encounter, enabling me to join hands with my brethren
everywhere to do something, if it be only a little, before the end of
the day, to make a gentler, kinder and wiser world in which to live!
