Religion In Morals And Dogma

Religion in Morals and Dogma p. 6 Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, prayer is an essential part of our ceremonies. p.25 Not that Philosophy or Science is in opposition to Religion. For Philosophy is but that knowledge of God and the Soul, which is derived from observation of the manifested action of God and the Soul, and from a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which the religious sentiment needs. P. 138 Scarcely a Masonic discourse is pronounced, that does not demonstrate the necessity and advantage of this faith, and especially recall the two constitutive principles of religion, that make all religion,—love of God and love of neighbor. …[Masonry] does not meddle with the domain of religion, nor inquire into the mysteries of regeneration. p. 139 [Masonry] teaches those truths that are written by the finger of God upon the heart of man,…. [Masonry] does not dogmatize, nor vainly imagine dogmatic certainty to be attainable. p. 142 It holds that, with all its evils, life is a blessing. To deny that is to destroy the basis of all religion, natural and revealed. The very foundation of all religion is laid on the firm belief that God is good; …. p. 161 Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief, falsifies and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Catholic, the Protestant, each professing his peculiar religion, sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate, must needs retain it, and cannot have two religions; for the social and sacred laws adapted to the usages, manners, and prejudices of particular countries, are the work of men. p. 163 The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, will not suffice us now. p. 165 Few believe in any religion because they have examined the evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal judgment, upon weighing the testimony. Not one man in ten thousand knows anything about the proofs of his faith. We believe what we are taught; and those are most fanatical who know least of the evidences on which their creed is based. Facts and testimony are not, except in very rare instances, the ground-work of faith. It is an imperative law of God’s Economy, unyielding and inflexible as Himself, that man shall accept without question the belief of those among whom he is born and reared; the faith so made a part of his nature resists all evidence to the contrary; and he will disbelieve even the evidence of his own senses, rather than yield up the religious belief which has grown up in him, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. p. 166 …no man hath or ever had a right to persecute another for his belief; for there cannot be two antagonistic rights; and if one can persecute another, because he himself is satisfied that the belief of the other is erroneous, the other has, for the same reason, equally as certain a right to persecute him. …It is no merit in a man to have a particular faith, excellent and sound and philosophic as it may be, when he imbibed it with his mother’s milk. It is no more a merit than his prejudices and his passions. The sincere Moslem has as much right to persecute us, as we to persecute him; and therefore Masonry

wisely requires no more than a belief in One Great All-Powerful Deity, the Father and Preserver of the Universe.

p. 167 No man truly obeys the Masonic law who merely tolerates those whose religious opinions are opposed to his own. Every man’s opinions are his own private property, and the rights of all men to maintain each his own are perfectly equal. Merely to tolerate, to bear with an opposing opinion, is to assume it to be heretical; and assert the right to persecute, if we would; and claim our toleration of it as a merit. The Mason’s creed goes further than that. No man, it holds, has any right in any way to interfere with the religious belief of another. It holds that each man is absolutely sovereign as to his own belief, and that belief is a matter absolutely foreign to all who do not entertain the same belief; and that, if there were any right of persecution at all, it would in all cases be a mutual right; because one party has the same right as the other to sit as judge in his own case; and God is she only magistrate that can rightfully decide between them. To that great Judge, Masonry refers the matter; and opening wide its portals, it invites to enter there and live in peace and harmony, the Protestant, the Catholic, the Jew. the Moslem; every man who will lead a truly virtuous and moral life, love his brethren, minister to the sick and distressed, and believe in the ONE, All-Powerful, All-Wise, everywhere-Present GOD, Architect, Creator, and Preserver of all things, by whose universal law of Harmony ever rolls on this universe, the great, vast, infinite circle of successive Death and Life:—to whose INEFFABLE NAME let all true Masons pay profoundest homage! for whose thousand blessings poured upon us, let us feel the sincerest gratitude, now, henceforth, and forever! p. 196 The religious faith thus taught by Masonry is indispensible 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 cannot grow healthfully, nor live happily, without it. It is therefore true. p. 197 The religion we teach is therefore as really a principle of things, and as certain and true, as gravitation. p. 208 The Supreme, Self-existent, Eternal, All-wise, All-powerful, Infinitely Good, Pitying, Beneficent, and Merciful Creator and Preserver of the Universe was the same, by whatever name he was called, to the intellectual and enlightened men of all nations.

p. 213 Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion; and its teachings are instruction in religion. p. 214 This is the true religion revealed to the ancient patriarchs; which Masonry has taught for many centuries, and which it will continue to teach as long as time endures. p. 221 Man’s view in regard to God, will contain only so much positive truth as the human mind is capable of receiving; whether that truth is attained by the exercise of reason, or communicated by revelation. It must necessarily be both limited and alloyed, to bring it within the competence of finite human intelligence. …Even Omnipotence cannot infuse infinite conceptions into finite minds; nor can God, without first entirely changing the conditions of our being, pour a complete and full knowledge of His own nature and attributes into the narrow capacity of a human soul. Human intelligence could not grasp it, nor human language express it. The visible is, necessarily, the measure of the invisible. …the Divine Nature is a theme on which man is little entitled to dogmatize.

p. 223 The true word of a Mason is, not the entire, perfect, absolute truth in regard to God; but the highest and noblest conception of Him that our minds are capable of forming; and this word is Ineffable, because one man cannot communicate to another his own conception of Deity; since every man’s conception of God must be proportional to his mental cultivation, and intellectual powers, and moral excellence. God is, as man conceives Him, the reflected image of man himself. p. 224 The religion of the many must necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and reflective few, not so much in its essence as in its forms, not so much in the spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as in the symbols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied. …The doctrines of the Bible are often not clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine. p. 275 That God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just and good; that Light will finally overcome Darkness—Good conquer Evil, and Truth be victor over Error;—these, rejecting the wild and useless speculations of the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnostics, and the Schools, are the religion and Philosophy of Masonry. p. 576 While all these faiths [Hindu, Egyptian, Slavs, Germanic, Scandanavian, Etruscan, Gnostic, Christian] assert their claims to the exclusive possession of the Truth, Masonry inculcates its old doctrine, and no more: ….That God is ONE; that HIS THOUGHT uttered in His WORD, created the Universe, and preserves it by those Eternal Laws which are the expression of that Thought: that the Soul of Man, breathed into him by God, is immortal as His Thoughts are; that he is free to do evil or to choose good, responsible for his acts and punishable for his sins: that all evil and wrong and suffering are but temporary, the discords of one great Harmony, and that in His good time they will lead by infinite modulations to the great, harmonic final chord and cadence of Truth, Love, Peace, and Happiness, that will rings forever and ever under the Arches of Heaven, among all the Stars and Worlds, and in all souls of men and Angels. p. 708 By religion, philosophy connects itself with humanity, which, from one end of the world to the other, aspires to God, believes in God, hopes in God. Philosophy contains in itself the common basis of all religious beliefs; it, as it were, borrows from them their principle, and returns it to them surrounded with light, elevated above uncertainty, secure against all attack. p. 710 The failure of fanciful religion to become philosophy, does not preclude philosophy from coinciding with true religion. Philosophy, or rather its object, the divine order of the Universe, it is the intellectual guide which the religious sentiment needs; …. p. 732 We may be sure that so soon as Religion and Philosophy become distinct departments, the mental activity of the age is in advance of its Faith; and that, though habit may sustain the latter for a time, its vitality is gone.