And now let me close this book, as every Lodge is closed, in peace and concord with all my Brethren, and with the ancient prayer that the Order may be preserved of God, and its members be cemented with every virtue. If, in what has here been written, Masonry has been given a conception spiritualized beyond the measure of its common understanding, I have but followed the example of our Ancient Brethren, who, lifting up their eyes to hills whence cometh strength, wrought their Masonic work upon the highest eminences of the mind and discerned the Mysteries of the Craft, not with eyes of the flesh, but with the vision and understanding of the spirit. And they it was who perpetuated for us of later time an Order and a Doctrine by the right interpretation and use of which we, too, might ascend where they had risen, and from the same Mount of Vision behold the same things that they had seen.
Few, perhaps, ascend to those high hills today, in this more than usually troubled and dark age. But some are ready and eager to do so, and for them especially it is that this book is written. All must ascend thither at last. But, at the moment, the World spirit is dominant in all our institutions. Wisdom is little apparent; for want of vision the people perish; and the quest of Light has to be pursued under conditions of peculiar adversity. But there is a mystery of Darkness no less than one of Light, and, in the molding hands of the Great Architect of the House of Life, the darkness and the light are both alike and serve as twin pillars that, finally, will establish that House in strength.
Those, then, who cannot, or are not yet prepared to, mount the higher path of understanding the things of the Craft, must nevertheless be thought of in charity, and spoken of in faith and in hope. For, placed as we all are in different and unequal degrees of perception upon the checker work floor of Life, around all alike, black and white, wise and foolish, learned and uninformed runs the unifying, surrounding skirt work and border of a common Providence; about us all are flung the Everlasting Arms; whilst, from the mutual interplay of the light and darkness in us all, becomes gradually generated the realization of that Wisdom in which, even now, we are all one, though of that unity few as yet are conscious. And since Wisdom will at last be justified of all her children, we need not complain of her processes, which, as they work out through the ages to a beneficent conclusion, temporarily involve the sharp and painful contrasts that we find.
Twenty-four centuries ago, at a time of
similar darkness and degeneracy to the present, an aged seer and
golden tongued poet, who through a long life had contemplated
the Ancient Mysteries of Light and Wisdom, spoke of the difficulty
of conveying them to a world not yet able to appreciate them;
and yet recognized the truth that, in the opposition of the World
spirit to them, the Divine purpose was nevertheless being effected.
In sending forth this book, then, and exhibiting the Mysteries
of Masonry in a light towards which, doubtless, some who read
it will not at once be responsive, let me appropriate that poet's
words, and welcome any in appreciation
of what I have written with the same serenity as his; the same
confidence of forward looking faith in its ultimate acceptance:
Knowledge, we are not foes!
I seek thee diligently;
But the World with a great wind blows,
Shining-but not from thee!
Yet blowing to beautiful things,
On, amid dark and light.
Till Life, through the trammelings
Of laws that are not the Right,
Breaks, clean and pure, and sings
Glorying to God in the height.
Euripides, Baccha; (trans Murray).
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