"ARE YOU A MASON?"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19780, 29 October 1927, Page 7 (Supplement)

"ARE YOU A MASON?"

A HISTORY OF THE CRAFT.

"Freemasonry as it exists to-day is part of a stream of culture which has flowed down through the ages. It is heir of all the past and it owns priceless treasures which have come into its possession from innumerable ancestors. But it is much more than that. It is a custodian of the social value of a free mind, of collective effort and individual responsibility, of tolerance in opinion, of equality before the law and in opportunity. . All sorts of agencies—racial groupings, political parties, religious organisations, factions both of reform and reaction—are insistently and insidiously seeking to undermine one or another of these principles for the sake each of its particular cause. Freemasonry, notwithstanding, clings to the ancient landmarks; if it should cease to do so, then indeed would its members no longer have a right to claim for themselves the high rank and title of Free and Accepted Masons." Such is the conclusion of "A History of Freemasonry" (Allen and Unvvm) by H. L. Haywood and James .E. Craig. The authors are Americans and Mr. Haywood has already to his credit several books on Masonry including "Symbolical Masonry' and "A Vest Pocket History of Masonry", while his collaborator is an editorial writer on the New York Sun and author of many Masonic essays and special articles. As far as a reader outside the fold can judge, the book is a model of its kind. The writers steer a true course between the Scylla of credulity and the Charybdis of scepticism. They would uot, for instance, insist, with the Rev. James Anderson who published a History of the Craft in 1723, that Noah, as Worshipful Grand Master of the only possiblo lodge of his day, "fabricated the Ark according to all the rules of Masonry", nor on the other hand do they admit that the similarities found between their rites and practices and those of primitive cults of savagery necessarily condemn or discredit the society to which they belong. They begin with a description of these primitive rites and symbols and pass from them to the Ancient Mysteries, tho Roman Collegia, and tho Old Charges. Then come chapters describing the mediaeval guild system, the formation of the first. Grand 'Lodge, the Great Division and the Masonic Reunion, the book ending with a review of Masonry on the Continent ami in the United States. The sane and reasonable tone of the book will win many sceptics over where shrieking fanaticism would drive them away. Freemasonry, the authors consider, has everything to gain and nothing to lose by a scientific appraisal of its records and traditions. "The history of Masonry is one chapter, written at divers times and often in strange alphabets, of the great history of mankind. It has its Tintagels and Camelots, shrouded in the golden haze of myth and legend: it has its own strong and material edifice, built foursquare to all the winds that blow, the foundations going down to the bedrock of human nature and its soaring towers pointing upward to God."