The Lodge now closes down to the First Degree and the tension of the Brethren becomes relaxed to that lower level of thought and labor. But as it does so, there rings out from the Master's Chair, one searching question; a question the answer to which furnishes the key to the whole purpose of the Degree. "What have you been enabled to discover in this Degree?"
The question is addressed to the J.W., the officer who in the Lodge represents the faculty of enlightened perception; but his answer to it is meant to voice the united testimony of every Brother present. And, be it noted, the question does not say "What have you discovered in the course of this Ceremony?" It implies: What great truth has become revealed to you from your whole experience as a Fellow Craft Mason? What have you succeeded in realizing from your life in that Degree?
It is a question we ought to answer honestly and after searching our conscience. If we have discovered in this Degree (as some profess to do) nothing but a comparatively dull and uninteresting ceremony, it would seem that we have wholly failed to understand it or its place in our scheme of Degree: and to profit by our initiation into it. The confession expected of us as we stand in Lodge with hand on heart, displaying the dual signs of our fidelity and our perseverance, is that this Degree has brought us to vivid realization that in the heart of each of us there burns invisibly a "blazing star or glory in the Center", of which a visible emblem hangs burning in the center of the Lodge. That is the discovery we are expected to testify to; we avouch that we have found the source of all Light dwelling at our own Center and that the kingdom of the Grand Geometrician is within ourselves. The personal realization of that supreme truth is the whole purpose of the Second Degree.
Doubtless that discovery will not come to any one suddenly or until after a period of devoted labor in the work of the Degree. The rising of the inward Sun into the personal consciousness is usually gradual, like the dawn of the outward sun in the world of Nature. At first we may hold it but as a notion, a theory, a belief; later, there will come a rising of light into the mind, scattering intellectual darkness and searchingly purifying the heart, burning up one's rubbish and building one's faculties anew; finally a realized fullness of light, as the meridian Sun shining in its strength, making all clear where once all was dark. No novice could bear the sudden manifesting of that Sun's full glory; whilst the unpurified man is self-barred from all perception of it. "If the Light within thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" and modern psychological science has revealed something of the clotted darkness and unsuspected filth usually pervading the subconsciousness and choking the action of man's immortal spirit. Hence the Craft's insistence upon adequate preparation, upon purity and the wearing of symbolic white garments. For the Candidate who hopes to realize the Craft teaching in its spirit and intention, and not merely in its letter and ceremonial, must indeed be candidus, a "white man" within and without, and as such he may hope to receive that "white stone" which the Scripture promises to him who endures to the end and which in our Order is signified by the Craftsman transforming himself into the "perfect ashlar".
But candidus implies something more than
whiteness in point of color. It involves the idea of incandescence,
the white glow resulting from heat, from ardent devotion of one's
whole being to the task of self-reconstruction, from that fervent
self-denying energy which overcomes natural inertia and sloth
and burns up one's darkness and superfluities as with fire. One
of our official Lectures refers to this under the emblems of "chalk,
charcoal, and clay," whereby the old Freemasons cryptically
taught that by the fire of labor our earthly understanding must
be transmuted from the blackness of charcoal to the purity of
chalk. And it is this idea which is preserved in the prayer offered
on closing the Lodge in this Degree, that our service may be continuously
characterized by "freedom, fervency and zeal," freedom
of will and opportunity to pursue the Masonic task; fervency in
advancing it; and a consuming zeal for the Lord's House which,
as mystical Craftsmen, we have pledged ourselves to build.
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