"32nd Degree - Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret (Master of the Royal Secret)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

reason, his soul, the bond-slave of his appetites, of his passions, of that which is material and animal, selfish and brutish in his nature.

It is not possible to create a true and genuine Brotherhood upon any theory of the baseness of human nature; nor by a community of belief in abstract propositions as to the nature of the Deity, the number of His persons, or other theorems of religious faith; nor by the establishment of a system of association simply for mutual relief and by which, in consideration of certain payments regularly made, each becomes entitled to a certain stipend in case of sickness, to attention then, and to the ceremonies of burial after death.

There can be no genuine Brotherhood without mutual regard good opinion and esteem, mutual charity, and mutual allowance for faults and failings. It is those only who learn habitually to think better of each other, to look habitually for the good that is in each other, and expect, allow for, and overlook, the evil, who can be Brethren one of the other, in any truse sense of the word. Those who gloat over the failings of one another, who think each other to be naturally base and low, of a nature in which the Evil predominates and excellence is not to be looked for, cannot be even friends, and much less Brethren.

No one can have a right to think meanly of his race, unless he also thinks meanly of himself. If, from a single fault or error, he judges of the character of another, and takes the single act as evidence of the whole nature of the man and of the whole course of his life, he ought to consent to be judged by the same rule and to admit it to be right that others should thus uncharitably condemn himself. But such judgments will become impossible when he incessantly reminds
himself that in every man who lives there is an immortal Soul endeavouring to do that which is right and just; a Ray, however small, and almost inappreciable, from the Great Source of Light and Intelligence, which ever struggles upward amid all the impediments of sense and the obstructions of the passions and that in every man this ray continually wages war against his evil passions and his unruly appetites or if it has succumbed, is never wholly extinguished and annihilated. For he will then see that it is not victory, but the struggle that deserves honour; since in this as in all else no man can always command success. Amid a cloud of errors, of failure and shortcomings, he will look for the struggling Soul, for that which is good in every one amid the evil and believing that each is better than from his acts and omissions he seems to be, and that God cares for him still, and pities him and loves him, he will feel that even the erring sinner is still his brother, still entitled to his sympathy and bound to him by the indissoluble ties of fellowship.

If there be nothing of the divine in man, what is he, after all, but a more intelligent animal? He hath no fault nor vice which some beast hath not and therefore in his vices he is but a beast of a higher order and he hath hardly any moral excellence, perhaps none, which some animal hath not in as great a degree, even the more excellent of these, such as generosity, fidelity and magnanimity.

Bardesan, the Syrian Christian, in his Book of the Laws of Countries, says, of men, that "in the things belonging to their bodies, they maintain their nature like animals, and in the things which belong to their minds, they do that which they wish, as being free and with power and as the likeness of God" and Meliton, Bishop of Sardis, in his Oration to Antoninus Caesar, says, "Let Him, the ever-living God, be always present in thy, mind; for thy mind itself is His likeness, for
it, too, is invisible and impalpable, and without form. As He exists forever, so thou also, when thou shalt have put off this which is visible and corruptible, shalt stand before Him forever, living and endowed with knowledge."

As a matter far above our comprehension and in the Hebrew Genesis the words that are used to express the origin of things are of uncertain meaning and with equal propriety may be translated by the word "generated", "produced," "made" or "created" we need not dispute nor debate whether the Soul or Spirit of man be a ray that has emanated or flowed forth from the Supreme Intelligence, or whether the Infinite Power hath called each into existence from nothing, by a mere exertion of Its will, and endowed it with immortality and with intelligence like unto the Divine Intelligence for in either case it may be said that in man the Divine is united to the Human. Of this union the equilateral Triangle inscribed within the Square is a Symbol.

We see the Soul, Plato said, as men see the statue of Glaucus, recovered from the sea wherein it had lain many years which viewing, it was not easy, if possible, to discern what was its original nature, its limbs having been partly broken and partly worn and by defacement changed, by the action of the waves and shells, weeds and pebbles adhering to it, so that it more resembled some strange monster than that which it was when it left its Divine Source. Even so, he said,
we see the Soul, deformed by innumerable things that have done it harm, have mutilated and defaced it. But the Mason who hath the ROYAL SECRET can also with him argue, from beholding its love of wisdom, its tendency toward association with what is divine and immortal, its larger aspirations, its struggles, though they may have ended in defeat, with the impediments and
enthralments of the senses and the passions, that when it shall have been rescued from the material environments that now prove too strong for it and be freed from the deforming and disfiguring accretions that here adhere to it, it will again be seen in its true nature, and by degrees ascend by the mystic ladder of the Spheres, to its first home and place of origin.

The ROYAL SECRET, of which you are Prince, if you are a true Adept, if knowledge seems to you advisable and Philosophy is for you, radiant with a divine beauty, is that which the Sohar terms The Mystery of the BALANCE. It is the Secret of the UNIVERSAL EQUILIBRIUM.

Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Divine WISDOM and the Infinite Divine POWER, from which result the Stability of the Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine Law, and the Principles of Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of it and the Supreme Obligation of the Divine Law upon all men, as superior to all other law and forming a part of all the laws of men and nations.

Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine JUSTICE and the Infinite Divine MERCY, the result of which is the Infinite Divine EQUITY and the Moral Harmony or Beauty of the Universe. By it the endurance of created and imperfect natures in the presence of a Perfect Deity is made possible and for Him, also as for us, to love is better than to hate and Forgiveness is wiser than Revenge or Punishment.

Of that Equilibrium between NECESSITY and LIBERTY, between the action of the DIVINE Omnipotence and the Free will of man, by which vices and base actions and ungenerous thoughts and words are crimes and wrongs, justly punished by the law of cause and consequence, though nothing in the Universe can happen or be done contrary to the will of God and without which
co-existence of Liberty and Necessity, of Free will in the creature and Omnipotence in the Creator, there could be no religion, nor any law of right and wrong, or merit and demerit, nor any justice in human punishments or penal laws.

Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil and Light and Darkness in the world, which assures us that all is the work of the Infinite Wisdom and of an Infinite Love and that there is no rebellious demon of Evil, or Principle of Darkness co-existent and in eternal controversy with God or the Principle of Light and of Good by attaining to the knowledge of which equilibrium we can, through Faith, see that the existence of Evil, Sin, Suffering and Sorrow in the world, is consistent with the Infinite Goodness as well as with the Infinite Wisdom of the Almighty.

Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repulsion, each a Force of nature, are contraries, in the souls of men and in the Universe of spheres and worlds and from the action and opposition of each against the other, result Harmony and that movement which is the Life of the Universe and the Soul alike. They are not antagonists of each other. The force that repels a planet from the Sun is no more an evil force, than that which attracts the Planet toward the central Luminary; for each is created and exerted by the Deity and the result is the harmonious movement of the obedient Planets in their elliptic orbits, and the mathematical accuracy and
unvarying regularity of their movements.

Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action which constitutes Free Government, by settling on immutable foundations Liberty with Obedience to Law, Equality with Subjection to Authority, and Fraternity with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best and of that Equilibrium between the Active Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the People, and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of the Past, expressed in constitutions of government, written or unwritten, and in the laws and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, as precedents and authority; which is represented by the arch resting on the two columns, Jachin and Boaz, that stand at the portals of the Temple builded by Wisdom, on one of which Masonry sets the celestial Globe, symbol of the spiritual part of our composite nature and on the
other the terrestrial Globe, symbol of the material part.

And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in ourselves and which Masonry incessantly labours to
accomplish in its Initiates, and demands of its Adepts and Princes (else unworthy of their titles), between the Spiritual and Divine and the Material and Human in man; between the Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense on one side, and the Appetites and Passions on the other, from which result the Harmony and Beauty of a well-regulated life.

Which possible Equilibrium proves to us that our Appetites and Senses also are Forces given unto us by God, for purposes of good, and not the fruits of the malignancy of a Devil, to be detested, mortified and if possible, rendered inert and dead that they are given us to be the means by which we shall be strengthened and incited to great and good deeds and are to be wisely used, and not abused; to be controlled and kept within due bounds by the Reason and the Moral Sense; to be made useful instruments and servants and not permitted to become the managers and masters, using our intellect and reason as base instrument for their gratification.

And this Equilibrium teaches us, above all, to reverence ourselves as immortal souls and to have
respect and charity for others, who are even such as we are, partakers with us of the Divine Nature, lighted by a ray of the Divine Intelligence, struggling like us toward the light; capable, like us, of progress upward toward perfection and deserving to be loved and pitied, but never to be hated nor despised; to be aided and encouraged in this life-struggle and not to be abandoned nor left to wander in the darkness alone, still less to be trampled upon in our own efforts to
ascend.

From the mutual action and re-action of each of these pairs of opposites and contraries results that which with them forms the Triangle, to all the Ancient Sages the expressive symbol of the Deity; as from Osiris and Isis, Har-oeri, the Master of Light and Life and the Creative Word. At the angles of one stand, symbolically, the three columns that support the Lodge, itself a symbol of the Universe, Wisdom, Power and Harmony or Beauty. One of these symbols, found on the
Tracing-Board of the Apprentice's Degree, teaches this last lesson of Freemasonry. It is the right-angled Triangle, representing man, as a union of the spiritual and material, of the divine arid human. The base, measured by the number 3, the number of the Triangle, represents the Deity and the Divine; the perpendicular, measured by the number 4, the number of the Square,
represents the Earth, the Material, and the Human and the hypothenuse, measured by 5, represents that nature which is produced by the union of the Divine and Human, the Soul and the Body; the squares, 9 and 16, of the base and perpendicular, added together, producing 25,
the square root whereof is 5, the measure of the hypothenuse.