I
This emblem is
like a key; while insignificant in itself, it opens up matters of such
vast
importance that to
pursue its teachings through all their ramifications would itself require
a
book; consequently
I can only hope to set down a few hints of the rich and various applications of
it.
There is no need
to say that of all working tools it is the most appropriate to the Master
Mason Degree; it
carries that significance upon its surface. The Entered Apprentice, who can
make only a
beginning at the task of shaping the ashlar, needs only the gavel and the gauge.
The
Fellow Craft, to
bring the stone into completeness of size and form, requires the plumb, square,
and level. The
Master Mason's task is to set the finished stone in its place and bind
it
there, for which
purpose the trowel is his most
necessary tool. Therefore the Master Mason
has been given the
Trowel as his
working tool because it is most symbolic of his function in
the great work of
Temple Building. When the Trowel has done its
work there is nothing more
to do, because the
structure stands complete, a united mass, incapable of falling apart. The
stones
which were many
have now, because of the binding power of the cement, become as
one.
II
If the stone
represents an individual man, and if the Temple represents the Fraternity as a
whole, it is
evident that the Trowel is the
symbol of that which has power to bind men together.
Therefore arises
the question, “What is this unifying power?” Let us undertake to answer
this
question from
several points of view; the individual, the Fraternity, and the world at large.
We very
frequently meet with men who seem to lack unity in their makeup; a spirit of
disorganization is
at work in them so that they seem to live at cross-purposes with
themselves.
What they know
they should do they do not, and many things which they do they do against their
own will. They may
have personal force, but it is scattered and their lives never come to a focus.
These men we say
that they lack character and we say right. Character comes from a word that
meant
originally a
graving tool; after long use the name of the tool came to be applied to the
engraving
itself, and thus
the term has come to stand for a man whose actions give one an impression
of
definiteness and
clear-cuttedness, like an engraving. A man who lacks character is a blur,
a
confused and
self-contradictory mass of impulses and forces. The one salvation for such a man
is
to find some means
of unifying himself, of using himself to some purpose so as to arrive at some
goal.
What can he use?
We may answer, perhaps, that he can best use an ideal, for an ideal
is
nothing other than
a picture of what one wills to be which he ever keeps before him, as
an
architect refers
to his blue prints. In short, the man needs a plan to live by, a thing we have
symbolized in our
Ritual by means of the tracing board.
Before the time
of the Reformation, builders did not use plans drawn to scale as
architects
now do, but laid
out their building design on the ground, or even on the floor of the workshop
or
the lodge. In
early English lodges this design was often drawn on the floor in chalk by the
Master,
and the youngest
Entered Apprentice would erase it with a mop and water at the end of the
ceremony;
after a while, to
make this labor unnecessary. "The plan of work" was drawn on a permanent
board
which was set on
an easel and exhibited during the degree, as is still done in England. The
tracing board of
a degree, therefore, is the plan of work for that degree, drawn in symbols and
hieroglyphics.
The tracing board itself, as it stands in the lodge, is a constant reminder to
the
Mason that, as a
spiritual builder, he must have a plan or an ideal for his life. When the Mason
does
live in loyalty
to an ideal he is a man of character, his faculties work in unison, there is no
war
between his
purposes and his behavior, and he is able to stand among his brethren as a
completed
temple. Such a
man has used a trowel in his own
life.
