MORALS AND DOGMA by Albert Pike



XII. GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT.
     [Master Architect.]

The great duties that are inculcated by the lessons taught by the
working-instruments of a Grand Master Architect, demanding so much of us,
and taking for granted the capacity to perform them faithfully and fully,
bring us at once to reflect upon the digni

Evermore the human soul struggles toward the light, toward God, and the
Infinite. It is especially so in its afflictions. Words go but a little
way into the depths of sorrow. The thoughts that writhe there in silence,
that go into the stillness of Infinitu

There are many things in us of which we are not distinctly conscious. To
waken that slumbering consciousness into life, and so to lead the soul up
to the Light, is one office of every great ministration to human nature,
whether its vehicle be the pen, the

We seem never to know what any thing means or is worth until we have lost
it. Many an organ, nerve, and fibre in our bodily frame performs its
silent part for years, and we are quite unconscious of its value. It is
not until it is injured that we discover

A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the
commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all
our little worldliness. The rude peasant from the Apennines, asleep at the
foot of a pillar in a majestic R

So the soul, however given up to the occupations of daily life, cannot
quite lose the sense of where it is, and of what is above it and around it.
The scene of its actual engagements may be small; the path of its steps,
beaten and familiar; the objects it

But from that ant-hill, not only the talk of the streets, the sounds of
music and revelling, the stir and tread of a multitude, the shout of joy
and the shriek of agony go up into the silent and all-surrounding
Infinitude; but also, amidst the stir and noi

Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. In him and
about him is that which should fill his life with majesty and sacredness.
Something of sublimity and sanctity has thus flashed down from heaven into
the heart of every one that lives. T

Life is no negative, or superficial or worldly existence. Our steps are
evermore haunted with thoughts, far beyond their own range, which some
have regarded as the reminiscences of a preexistent state. So it is with
us all, in the beaten and worn track of

We all not only have better intimations, but are capable of better things
than we know. The pressure of some great emergency would develop in us
powers, beyond the worldly bias of our spirits; and Heaven so deals with
us, from time to time, as to call fort

Upon all conditions of men presses down one impartial law. To all
situations, to all fortunes, high or low, the mind gives their character.
They are, in effect, not what they are in themselves, but what they are to
the feeling of their possessors. The King

Man is no bubble upon the sea of his fortunes, helpless and irresponsible
upon the tide of events. Out of the same circumstances, different men bring
totally different results. The same difficulty, distress, poverty, or
misfortune, that breaks down one man

The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new element of
his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene, and a ruling power,
delegated from Heaven. Never was a human being sunk so low that he had
not, by God's gift, the power to rise, B

Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of
the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. To the one, it
is all beauty and gladness; the waves

Let the Mason never forget that life and the world are what we make them
by our social character; by our adaptation, or want of adaptation to the
social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of the world. To the
selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to

To the gentle, many will be gentle; to the kind, many will be kind. A
good man will find that there is goodness in the world; an honest man will
find that there is honesty in the world; and a man of principle will find
principle and integrity in the minds

There are no blessings which the mind may not convert into the bitterest
of evils; and no trials which it may not transform into the noblest and
divinest blessings. There are no temptations from which assailed virtue
may not gain strength, instead of falli

But to the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt, and the
sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and through every
avenue of thought and imagination. He is prepared to capitulate before the
first approach is commenced, and s

The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one mind, while
in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independence, integrity, and
generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and a healthful refreshment to
others. To one, the world is a great

Thorough, faithful, and honest endeavour to improve, is always
successful, and the highest happiness. To sigh sentimentally over human
misfortune, is fit only for the mind's childhood; and the mind's misery is
chiefly its own fault; appointed, under the go

A certain kind and degree of spirituality enter into the largest part of
even the most ordinary life. You can carry on no business, without some
faith in man. You cannot even dig in the ground, without a reliance on the
unseen result. You cannot think or r

Believe that there is a God; that He is our father; that He has paternal
interest in our welfare and improvement; that He has given us powers, by
means of which we may escape from sin and ruin; that He has destined us to
a future life of endless progress t

The religious faith thus taught by Masonry is indispensable to the
attainment of the great ends of life; and must therefore have been
designed to be a part of it. We are made for this faith; and there must be
something, somewhere, for us to believe in. We

No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can improve and
be happy, otherwise than as the swine are, without conscience, without
hope, without a reliance on a just, wise, and beneficent God. We must, of
necessity, embrace the great truths

Society, in its great relations, is as much the creation of Heaven as is
the system of the Universe. If that bond of gravitation that holds all
worlds and systems together, were suddenly severed, the universe would fly
into wild and boundless chaos. And if

Faith in moral principles, in virtue, and in God, is as necessary for the
guidance of a man, as instinct is for the guidance of an animal. And
therefore this faith, as a principle of man s nature, has a mission as
truly authentic in God's Providence, as th

God has ordained that life shall be a social state. We are members of a
civil community. The life of that community depends upon its moral
condition. Public spirit, intelligence, uprightness, temperance, kindness,
domestic purity, will make it a happy comm

The Public is no vague abstraction; nor should that which is done against
that Public, against public interest, law, or virtue, press but lightly on
the conscience. It is but a vast expansion of individual life; an ocean of
tears, an atmosphere of sighs, o

What an unequalled interest lies in the virtue of every one whom we love!
In his virtue, nowhere but in his virtue, is garnered up the incomparable
treasure. What care we for brother or friend, compared with what we care
for his honour, his fidelity, his r

If life could, by any process, be made insensible to pain and pleasure; if
the human heart were hard as adamant, then avarice, ambition, and
sensuality might channel out their paths in it, and make it their beaten
way; and none would wonder or protest. If

But we art not insensible brutes, who can refuse the call of reason and
conscience. The soul is capable of remorse. When the great dispensations
of life press down upon us, we weep, and suffer and sorrow. And sorrow and
agony desire other companion-ships t

Everywhere, human life is a great and solemn dispensation. Man,
suffering, enjoying, loving, hating, hoping, and fearing, chained to the
earth and yet exploring the far recesses of the universe, has the power to
commune with God and His angels. Around this

There are no tokens of public mourning for the calamity of the soul. Men
weep when the body dies; and when it is borne to its last rest, they
follow it with sad and mournful procession. But for the dying soul there
is no open lamentation; for the lost soul

And yet the mind and soul of man have a value which nothing else has.
They are worth a care which nothing else is worth; and to the single,
solitary individual, they ought to possess an interest which nothing else
possesses. The stored treasures of the hea

And yet the mind is in reality little known or considered. It is all
which man permanently is, his inward being, his divine energy, his
immortal thought, his boundless capacity, his infinite aspiration; and
nevertheless, few value it for what it is worth.

Men do not feel the worth of their own souls. They are proud of their
mental powers; but the intrinsic, inner, infinite worth of their own minds
they do not perceive. The poor man, admitted to a palace, feels, lofty and
immortal being as he is, like a mere

The difference among men is not so much in their nature and intrinsic
power, as in the faculty of communication. Some have the capacity of
uttering and embodying in words their thoughts. All men, more or less,
feel those thoughts. The glory of genius and t

Most glorious is this capacity ! A power to commune with God and His
Angels; a reflection of the Uncreated Light; a mirror that can collect and
concentrate upon itself all the moral splendours of the Universe. It is
the soul alone that gives any value to t

My Brother, in the hope that you have listened to and understood the
Instruction and Lecture of this Degree, and that you feel the dignity of
your own nature and the vast capacities of your own soul for good or evil,
I proceed briefly to communicate to you

The Hebrew word, in the old Hebrew and Samaritan character, suspended in
the East, over the five columns, is ADONAI, one of the names of God,
usually translated Lord; and which the Hebrews, in reading, always
substitute for the True Name, which is for them

The five columns, in the five different orders of architecture, are
emblematical to us of the five principal divisions of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite:

1.--The Tuscan, of the three blue Degrees, or the primitive Masonry. 2.
--The Doric, of the ineffable Degrees, from the fourth to the fourteenth,
inclusive. 3.--The Ionic, of the fifteenth and sixteenth, or second
temple Degrees. 4.--The Corinthian, of the seventeenth and eighteenth
Degrees, or those of the new law. 5.--The Composite, of the philosophical
and chivalric Degrees intermingled, from the nineteenth to the
thirty-second, inclusive.

The North Star, always fixed and immutable for us, represents the point
in the centre of the circle, or the Deity in the centre of the Universe.
It is the especial symbol of duty and of faith. To it, and the seven that
continually revolve around it, mystic

The Morning Star, rising in the East, Jupiter, called by the Hebrews
Tsadoc or Tsydyk, Just, is an emblem to us of the ever approaching dawn of
perfection and Masonic light.

The three great lights of the Lodge are symbols to us of the Power,
Wisdom and Beneficence of the Deity. They are also symbols of the first
three Sephiroth, or Emanations of the Deity, according to the Kabalah,
Kether, the omnipotent divine will; Chochmah,

In another aspect of this Degree, the Chief of the Architects [Rab
Banaim,] symbolizes the constitutional executive head and chief of a free
government; and the Degree teaches us that no free government can long
endure, when the people cease to select for

For the present, my Brother, let this suffice. We welcome you among us,
to this peaceful retreat of virtue, to a participation in our privileges,
to a share in our joys and our sorrows. 