"I have been a Mason for a year now," remarked the Young Brother to the Old Past Master "and while I find a great deal in Masonry to enjoy, and like the fellows and all that, I am more or less in the dark as to what good Masonry really is in the world. I don't mean that I can't appreciate its charity, or its fellowship, but it seems to me that I don't get much out of it; I can't see why it has any function outside of that relationship we enjoy in the lodge room and the little charitable acts we do."

"I think I could win an argument about you," smiled the Old Past Master.

"An argument about me?"

"Yes. You say you have been a Master Mason for 3 years. I think I could prove to the satisfaction of a jury of your peers who would not need to be Master Masons; that while you are a lodge member in good standing, you are not a Master Mason."

"I don't think I quite understand," puzzled the Young Mason. "I was surely initiated, passed and raised. I have my certificate and my good standing card. I attend the lodge regularly. I do what work I am assigned. If that isn't being a Master Mason, what is?"

"You have the body but not the spirit," retorted the Old Past Master. "You eat the husks and disregard the kernel. You know the ritual and fail to understand its meaning. You carry the documents but for you they attest but an empty form. You do not under­stand the first underlying principle which makes Ma­sonry the great force she is. And yet, in spite of it you enjoy her blessings, which is one of her miracles, that a man may love and profit by what he does not comprehend."

"Why.....I..I just don't understand you at all. I am sure I am a good Mason."

"No man is a good Mason who thinks the fraternity has no function beyond pleasant association in lodge, and charity. Man, there are thousands of Masons who never see the inside of a lodge and therefore, perforce, miss the fellowship. There are thousands who never need her charity and so come never in contact with one of its many features. Yet these may take freely and largely from the treasure house which is Masonry."

"Masonry, my young friend, is an opportunity. It gives a man a chance to do and to be, among the world of men, something he otherwise could not accomplish, a state to which he otherwise could not attain. No man kneels at the Altar of Masonry and rises again the same man. At the Altar something is taken from him never to return; his feeling of living for himself alone. Be he never so selfish, never so self-centered, never so much an individualist, at the Altar he leaves behind him some of the dross of his purely profane make-up."

"No man kneels at the Altar of Masonry and rises the same man, because, in the place where the dross and selfishness was, is put a little of the most Divine spark which men may see. Where was the self-in­terest is put an interest in others. Where was the egotism is put love for one's fellow man."

"You say that the 'fraternity has no function.' Man, the fraternity performs the greatest function of any institution at work among men, in that it provides a common meeting ground where all of us, be our creed, our social position, our wealth, our ideas, our station in life what they may, may meet and understand one another.”

"What caused the downfall of Rome? Class hatred. What caused the Civil war? Failure of one people to understand another, and an inequality of men, which this country could not endure. What caused the Great War? Class hatred. What is the greatest leveler of class in the world? Masonry. Where is the only place in which capitalist and laborer, socialist and democrat, fundamentalist and modernist, Jew and Gen­tile, gentle and simple alike may meet and forget their differences? In a Masonic lodge, boy, through the in­fluence of Masonry ... Masonry, which opens her portals to men because they are men, not because they are wealthy or wise or foolish or great or small but because they seek the brotherhood which only she can give.

"Masonry has no function? Why, son, the function of charity, great as it is, is the least of the things Masonry does; the fellowship in the lodge room, beautiful as it is, is at best not much more than one can get in any good club, association, organization. These are beauties of Masonry, but they are also beauties of other organizations. The great fundamental beauty of Masonry is all her own. She, and only she, stretches a kindly and loving hand around the world, uniting millions in a bond too strong for breaking. Time has demonstrated that Masonry is too strong for war; too strong for hate, too strong for jealousy and fear; the worst of men have used the strongest of means and have but pushed Masonry to one side for the moment; not all their efforts have broken her, or ever will!”

"Masonry gives us all a chance to do and to be; to do a little, however humble the part, in making the world better; to be a little larger, a little fuller in our lives, a little nearer to the G. A. O. T. U. And unless a man understand this, and believe it, and take it to his heart and live it in his daily life, and strive to show it forth to others in his every act; unless he live and love and labor in his Masonry, I say he is no Master Mason; aye, though he belong to all Rites and carry all cards, though he be hung as a Christmas tree with jewels and pins, though he be an officer in all bodies. But the man who has it in his heart, and sees in Ma­sonry the chance to be in reality what he has sworn he would be, a brother to his fellow Masons, is a Master Mason though he be raised but tonight, belongs to no organization but his Blue Lodge and be too poor to buy and wear a single pin."

The young brother, looking down, unfastened the emblem from his coat lapel and handed it to the Old Past Master.

"Of course you are right," he said, low. "Here is my pin. Don't give it back to me until you think I am worthy to wear it."

The Old Past Master smiled. "I think you would better put it back now," he answered gently.

"None are more fit to wear the square and compass than those who know themselves unworthy, for they are those who strive to be real Masons."

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