Silanganan Lodge No. 19

Vol. 99 No. 10	May 2007
	Meeting the Challenges  By VW Celestino Caingat Jr, DDGM. Acceptance speech delivered during the turnover ceremony for Masonic District NCR-F, 28 April 2007.

 

Thank you very much brethren. Before anything else, please allow me to extend my congratulations to the Very Worshipful Edgar B. Tolentino, our Immediate Past District Deputy Grand Master, for his remarkable accomplishments, contributions and undying support for our beloved fraternity. 

Last Saturday at our Annual Communication in Clark, Angeles, Pampanga, I was deeply elated and honored over my installation as your DDGM. I must admit that at present, I am quite nervous particularly on the high degree of responsibilities attached to the office of the DDGM. 

Managing the affairs of Masonic District NCR-f is indeed very challenging, but I do always expect it to be very enlightening and humbling. With these new responsibilities, I am committed to serve this Masonic district to the best of my limited ability. With your full support and cooperation brethren, I am very optimistic that we may be able to accomplish our desired plans and programs for this Masonic year. We will try to emulate the good accomplishments, not only by our immediate past DDGM but all other DDGMs who have contributed lots of honor and dignity to our Fraternity.

Again, thank you and good evening.

TURNING A NEW LEAF  By VW Edgar Tolentino, PDDGM. Valedictory address delivered during the turnover ceremony for Masonic District NCR-F, 28 April 2007.

 

It has been said that life is made up of chapters, each containing a different set of characters, circumstances, and moral challenges. No truer words were spoken. Thus we are not surprised today to find ourselves at a juncture, experiencing a change within ourselves as we adapt to the new course we are embarked on. Though this turnover ceremony, which inaugurates a new chapter in the annals of our district, should fuel our optimism, still for me it seems the end of an exhilarating and fruitful stage of our common journey, one that I had thoroughly enjoyed and that had taught me a lot of things. Before anything else, therefore, and with only a longing for the good old days, I have to say goodbye and acknowledge my many debts to those who had been my companions on that heady trip up windswept passes and down serene valleys. I hope to repay their kindnesses in full before long. But let me be clear about one thing: my stepping down from the elevated position entrusted to me does not really make any difference; there will be no cooling of passions or, heaven forbid, disenchantment as far as I can see. We started out together; we serve the Brotherhood together; and we will stick together. Rest assured I will remain as concerned as ever about the affairs of the district and its member lodges. 

There is no need to enumerate the things we have accomplished during the twelve months allotted to us. They speak for themselves and are on the record for others to assess. All I can say is that we, in our respective capacities, had a swell time planning and executing each project and carrying out every activity. It was truly a marvelous time, and I consider it a rare and great privilege to have served and led the district then. But that chapter, too, no matter how glorious, must give way to the next one, to the youthful vigor and fresh insights of the new District Deputy Grand Master, who, if I may speak for all of us here, can count on our collective support -- on the same wholehearted cooperation the lodges and their officers extended to me during my watch. 

And so, without further ado, it is with great pleasure that I now turn over the symbol of authority of the DDGM and all its trappings to Very Worshipful Celestino “Bogs” Caingat Jr. I wish him a most productive and pleasant year ahead. And we all welcome him to our hearts and pledge that throughout his term we shall continue to be guided by the Masonic precepts we all hold dear, as well as motivated by the set of ideals expressed as Relief in Truth, Brotherly Love, and Harmony.

Thank you and may our district long endure as a force for good.

Part 3. George Oliver. 

KRAUSE'S philosophy is concerned chiefly with the relation of Masonry to the philosophy of law and government. Oliver's philosophy of Masonry deals rather with Masonry in its relation to the philosophy of religion. In order to understand this we need only note that Krause was by profession a philosopher and that the main work of his life was done in the philosophy of law and of government while, on the other hand, Oliver was a clergyman. As in Preston's case, Oliver's general philosophical ideas came to him ready-made. He flowed with the philosophical current of his time. He did not turn it into new channels or affect its course as did Krause. 

George Oliver was born at Pepplewick in the county of Nottingham, November 5, 1782. His father was a clergyman of the established church and his mother was the daughter of a country gentleman. Hence he had the advantage of a bringing up under conditions of culture and refinement. He was educated at Nottingham and made such progress ¡­ by 1836 he was able to take his degree of doctor of divinity. 

Beginning in 1811 Oliver was a diligent student of and a prolific writer upon antiquities, particularly ecclesiastical antiquities and his writings soon brought him a high reputation as an antiquary. 

Oliver's father was a zealous and well-informed Mason and a ritualist of the literal school, that is of the type who regard literal expertness in ritual as the unum necessarium in Masonry. Accordingly Oliver was thoroughly trained on this side -- which indeed is indispensable not only to Masonic advancement but, I suspect, to Masonic scholarship -- and as a result of his thorough knowledge of the work and his tireless activity his rise in the Craft was rapid. 

The list of Oliver's Masonic writings is very long. He is the most prolific of Masonic authors and on the whole has had the widest influence. He began by publishing a number of Masonic sermons but presently as one may suspect by way of revolt from the mechanical ritualistic Masonry to which, as it were, he had been bred he turned his attention to the history and subsequently to the philosophy of the Craft. 

His first historical work is the well-known "Antiquities of Free Masonry: comprising illustrations of the five grand periods of Masonry from the creation of the world to the dedication of King Solomon's temple." This was published in 1823. Then followed in order: 

¡¤       The Star in the East, his first philosophical work, designed to show the relation of Masonry to religion.

¡¤       Signs and Symbols, an exposition of the history and significance of all the Masonic symbols then recognized.

¡¤       History of Initiation, twelve lectures on the ancient mysteries in which Oliver sought to trace Masonic initiation and ancient systems of initiation to a common origin; a matter with respect to which recent anthropological and sociological studies of primitive secret societies indicate that he may have hit the truth much more nearly than we had been supposing of late.

¡¤       The Theocratic Philosophy of Masonry, a further development of his ideas as to the relation of Masonry to religion.

¡¤       A History of Free Masonry from 1829 to 1840, intended as an appendix to Preston's Illustrations of Masonry which he had edited in 1829.

¡¤       Historical Landmarks and Other Evidences of Masonry Explained, by far his greatest work, a monument of wide reading and laborious research.

¡¤       Revelations of a Square, a bit of Masonic fiction.

¡¤       The Golden Remains of the Early Masonic Writers, an elaborate compilation in five volumes.

¡¤       The Symbol of Glory, his best discussion of the object and purpose of Masonry.

¡¤       A Mirror for the Johannite Masons, in which he discusses the dedication of lodges and the two Sts. John.

¡¤       The Origin and Insignia of the Royal Arch Degree.

¡¤       A Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry, the first of a long line of such dictionaries.

¡¤       Institutes of Masonic Jurisprudence. 

He also published a "Book of the Lodge," a sort of ritualistic manual similar to the monitors or manuals so well known today. Likewise he was a constant contributor to English and even to American Masonic periodicals. Probably no one not by profession a writer can show such a list, bearing in mind how many of the foregoing are books of the first order in their class. 

The dominant philosophy everywhere when Oliver wrote was what is known as romanticism. In England, which at this period was still primarily taken up with religious rather than with philosophical or scientific questions, romanticism was especially strong. One of the most representative of the German romantic philosophers argued that all separation between poetry, philosophy and religion was superficial and arbitrary. He argued that while the poet regards philosophy as an expounding of the poetry of life which is to be found in all things, the philosopher regards poetry as a pictorial form, perceived intuitively, of the thought which moves in all things. But, he said, religion is a phase of the same quest for unity. Let me quote his words since they bear strongly upon Oliver's views: "If it is allowed that the task of thought is to show us the unity of all things, can philosophical endeavor differ in its essence from the religious yearning which likewise seeks to transcend the oppositions and unrest of life?" 

This romantic philosophy came into England chiefly through the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) who wrote while Oliver's chief literary activities were in progress and died about six years before the most important and significant of Oliver's writings. The relation of the one to the other is so clear that a moment's digression as to Coleridge is necessary. 

In his youth Coleridge tells us he had been a disciple of the 18^th century rationalists. But he was repelled by the attempt, so characteristic of the eighteenth century, to reduce mental phenomena to elementary functions by means of analysis and to discover mechanical laws for all consciousness. If this could be done, he said, it would destroy the unity and activity of the mind. At this time he came in contact with the German romantic philosophy and turned in the new direction. Indeed he was a romanticist by nature. He reveled, it has been said, in ideas of the absolute in which the differences and oppositions of the finite world blended and disappeared. He was a poet and a preacher rather than a thinker and rarely got beyond intuition and prophecy. Hence there is more than a little truth in the saying of one of his critics that he led his generation through moonshine to orthodoxy and to a more pronounced orthodoxy than had formerly obtained. It is said that the Anglo-Catholic or Puseyite movement of the 19^th century, which carried Newman and so many other English scholars into the church of Rome, was a result of Coleridge's ideas. 

What, then, were the characteristics of the philosophy of the time and place in which Oliver wrote? 

¡¤       Speculation and imagination were the chief organs of thought. The poetic passed for the only real. Enthusiasm passed for scholarship. 

¡¤       Reason abdicated for a season. Conviction, intuition and faith were regarded as justifying themselves. 

¡¤       In the same way tradition became something which justified itself. This is seen particularly in the so-called Oxford movement and the Catholic reaction in England. It is seen also in the position of the time as to the English constitution which Dickens has satirized in the person of Mr. Podsnap. 

¡¤       Reconciliation of Christianity with philosophy became a recognized problem. For example, Coleridge took this for his chief work. 

All of these features may be seen in Oliver's Masonic writings. The defects of his historical writing, for example, which have utterly debased popular Masonic history are the defects of a romanticist. A warm imagination and speculative enthusiasm carried him away. In common with his philosophical teachers he had thrown off the critical method and had lost the faculty of discriminating accurately between what had been and what he would like to believe had been. On the other hand, in Masonic philosophy, where pure speculation was allowable, these qualities had a certain value. Mill says of Coleridge that his was one of the great seminal minds of his time. In the same way Oliver more than anyone else set men to thinking upon the problems of Masonic philosophy. His style is agreeable. He is always easy to read and often entertaining. A multitude of readers, who would be repelled by Krause's learned but difficult pages, have rejoiced in Oliver. Hence he has given a form and direction to Masonic speculation which still persist. 

Turning to Oliver's philosophy of Masonry three important points may be noted. Let me take these up in order: 

1.  His theory of the relation of Masonry to religion. 

It has been said that reconciliation of knowledge with religion and unifying of religion with all other human activities was a favorite undertaking of the romantic philosophy. It was natural, therefore that a clergyman should be attracted to this type of thought and that a zealous churchman and enthusiastic Mason who had learned from Preston, whose book he edited, that Masonry was knowledge, should convert the problem into one of relating Masonry to religion and of reconciling them. Oliver's mode of doing this was highly ingenious. Religion and Masonry, he would say, are identical in their end and they are identical in their end with knowledge. Each is a manifestation of the spirit, the absolute, that is of God. God, he would say, is manifest to us, first, by revelation and thus manifest we know Him and know ourselves and know the universe through religion. Second, He is manifest to us by tradition, and in this way we know Him and know ourselves and know the universe through Masonry. Third, He is manifest to us through reason, and in this way we know Him and know ourselves and know the universe through knowledge or, as we have come to call it, science. In common with the romanticists he sought to throw the entire content of life into one interconnected whole; and this he found in God or in the absolute. Accordingly to him Masonry was one mode of approach to God, the other two being religion and science. If Krause's triad was law, religion, morals, given effect by state, church, Masonry, Oliver's is revelation, tradition, reason, expounded, handed down, developed and interpreted by religion, Masonry and science. 

2.  His theory of Masonry as a tradition coming down to us from a pure state prior to the Flood. 

Oliver's theory of Masonry as a system of tradition seems to have been derived from Hutchinson. The latter deserves a moment's digression. 

William Hutchinson (1732-1814), an English lawyer, is perhaps the earliest Masonic philosopher. In 1774 by permission of the Grand Lodge, which then insisted upon a right to censor all Masonic writing, Hutchinson published his chief Masonic work entitled "The Spirit of Masonry." Oliver himself has said that this book was "the first efficient attempt to explain in a rational and scientific manner the true philosophy of the order." Hutchinson's doctrine was that the lost word was symbolical of lost religious purity due to corruptions of the Jewish faith. He held that the master's degree symbolized the new law of Christ taking the place of the old law of Judaism which had become dead and corrupt. By a bit of fanciful etymology he derived Hiram (Huram) from the Greek heuramen (we have found it) and Acacia from the Greek alpha privative and Kakia (evil) ©¤ Akakia, freedom from evil, or freedom from sin. Thus, he says, the Master Mason "represents a man under the Christian doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation." Hutchinson influenced Hemming, who wrote the lectures of the Ancients and a trace of this influence may be seen in America in the interpretation of the blazing star in our lectures. 

Clearly enough Oliver got his cue from Hutchinson. But Hutchinson had identified religion and Masonry. This, Oliver, as a clergyman of the established church, could not allow. Instead Oliver sought to unify them, that is while keeping them distinct to make them phases of a higher unity, to make them expressions of what is ultimately, though not immediately, one. This he did as has been seen by regarding each as a mode of approach to God. That conception led to his theory of Masonry as a body of tradition. 

Briefly stated Oliver's theory is this. He held that Masonry was to be found as a body of tradition in the earliest periods of history as recorded in Scripture. This tradition according to his enthusiastic speculations was taught by Seth to his descendants and was practiced by them as a pure or primitive Masonry before the flood. Thus it passed over to Noah and his descendants and at the dispersion of mankind was divided into pure Masonry and spurious Masonry. The pure Masonry passed through the patriarchs to Solomon and thence to the present institution. On the other hand, the pure tradition was corrupted among the pagans and took the form of the mysteries and initiatory rites of antiquity. Accordingly, he held, we have in Masonry a traditional science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. 

3.  His theory of the essentially Christian nature of our institution. 

Again taking his cue from Hutchinson, though the old charges to be true to holy church gave him some warrant -- Oliver insisted that Masonry was strictly a Christian institution. He believed of course that Christianity was foretold and in a way revealed in the Old Testament and that the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, was clearly expounded therein. In the same way he held that the earliest of Masonic symbols also taught the doctrine of the Trinity and that the Masonic references to the Grand Architect of the Universe were references to Christ. Indeed in his system this was necessary. For if religion, which to him could mean only the Christian religion, and Masonry were to be unified it must be as setting before us different manifestations of the same God. There could be but one God and that triune God, the God of his religion, he held was made known to us by revelation, by tradition and by reason. Thus Oliver's interpretation of revelation determined his interpretation of the other two. If we bear this in mind we may accept his general philosophy without accepting this particular doctrine. For it needs only to postulate a more universal and more general religion than he professed, a religion above sects, creeds and dogmas to hold that such a religion along with Masonry and along with reason leads to God. Moreover Hindu and Muslim may each put his own interpretation on revelation and join in believing in these three modes of knowing the absolute. Mackey reproaches Oliver for narrowness and sectarianism. But the possibilities of his Masonic philosophy are as broad as could be desired. It was too soon in 1840 to ask a clergyman to go further in its application than he went. 

What then are Oliver's answers to the three fundamental questions of Masonic philosophy? 

1.       What is the end of Masonry, for what does the institution exist? Oliver would answer, it is one in its end with religion and with science. Each of these are means through which we are brought into relation with the absolute. They are the means through which we know God and his works. 

2.       How does Masonry seek to achieve its end? Oliver would answer by preserving, handing down and interpreting a tradition of immemorial antiquity, a pure tradition from the childhood of the race. 

3.       What are the fundamental principles by which Masonry is governed in achieving its task? Oliver would say, the fundamental principles of Masonry are essentially the principles of religion as the basic principles of the moral world. But in Masonry they appear in a traditional form. Thus, for example, toleration in Masonry is a form of what in religion we call charity; universality in Masonry is a traditional form of what in religion we call love of one's neighbor. 

As has been said, Preston's was a philosophy of Masonry in its relation to knowledge. Krause's was a philosophy of Masonry in its relation to law and government. Oliver's is a philosophy of Masonry in its relation to religion. Neither of the others has had a tithe of the influence which Oliver's philosophy has exerted upon Masonic thought. And on the whole his influence has been valuable and stimulating. A critic has said that "all he had to give was transcendental moonshine which shed a new light on old things for many a young doubter and seeker, but which contained no new life." In a sense this is so. Oliver's Masonic philosophy is an obvious product of a clergyman in the age of the romantic philosophy who had read and reflected upon Hutchinson. And yet it is not true that there is no new life in Oliver. Except for Krause nothing so well worthwhile has been pointed out for Masonry as the end which Oliver found for us. I cannot but feel that it is a great misfortune that his philosophy is being peddled out to a new generation in grandiloquent fragments through Grand Lodge orations and articles in the Masonic press instead of being apprehended as a whole.