ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES
by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D.

R

The Hebrew letter is 7, pronounced Resh. The eighteenth letter in the English and other Western alphabets- The word Resh signifies forehead and in the Phenician and hieroglyphic character is presented as in the illustration. Compare this with the Hebrew letter. Its numerical value is 900, and the equivalent as a name of God is Rahum, signifying clemency.

RABBANAIM

The word off, is Rabbinical Hebrew, and signifies the Chief of the Architects. A significant word in the advanced Degrees.

RABBINISM

The system of philosophy taught by the Jewish Rabbis subsequent to the dispersion, which is engaged in mystical explanations of the oral law. With the reveries of the Jewish teachers was mingled the Egyptian, the Arabic, and the Grecian doctrines. From the Egyptians, especially, Rabbinism derived its allegorical and symbolic mode of instruction. Out of it sprang the Therapeutists and the Essenian9; and it gave rise to the composition of the Talmud, many of whose legends have been incorporated into the mythical philosophy of Speculative Freemasonry. This it is that makes Rabbinism an interesting subject of research to the Masonic student.

RABBONI

Literally, My Master, equivalent to the pure Hebrew, Adoni. As a significant word in the advanced Degrees, it has been translated a most Excellent Master, and its usage by the later Jews will justify that interpretation. Buxtorf (Talt mudic Lexicon) tells us that about the time of Christ this title arose in the School of Hillel, and was given to only seven of their wise men who were preeminent for their learning.

Jahn (Biblical Archeology, page 106) says that Gamaliel, the preceptor of Saint Paul, was one of these. They styled themselves the children of wisdom, which is an expression very nearly corresponding to the Greek. The word occurs once, as applied to Christ, in the New Testament (John xx, 16), “Jesus said unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master.” The Masonie myth in the Most Excellent Master’s Degree, that it was the title addressed by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon on beholding the magnificence and splendor of the Temple, lacks the element of plausibility, inasmuch as the word was not in use in the time of Solomon.

RAGON, J. M.

One of the most distinguished Masonic writers of France. His contemporaries did not hesitate to call him “the most learned Freemason of the nineteenth century.” He was born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, most probably at Bruges, in Belgium, where in 1803 he was initiated in the Lodge Réunion des Amis du Nord, and subsequently assisted in the foundation of the Lodge and Chapter of Vrais Amis in the same city. On his removal to Paris he continued his devotion to Freemasonry and was the founder in 1805 of the celebrated Lodge of Les Trinosophes. In that Lodge he delivered, in 1818, a course of lectures on ancient and modern initiations, which twenty years afterward were repeated at the request of the Lodge, and published in 1841, under the title of Cours Philosophique et Interpratif ales Initiations Anciennes et Moderns.

This work was printed with the express permission of the Grand Orient of France, but three years after that body denounced its second edition for containing some additional matter Rebold charges this act to the petty passions of the day, and twenty-five years after the Grand Orient made ample reparation in the honor that it paid to the memory of Ragon. In 1818 and 1819, he was editor-in-chief of the periodical published during those years under the title of Hermes, on Archives Maçonniques. In 1853, he published Orthodoxie Maçonnique, a work abounding in historical information, although some of his statements are inaccurate. In 1861, he published the Tuileur Général de la Franc-Maçonnerie, ou Manuel de l’Initié: a book not merely confined to the details of Degrees, but which is enriched with many valuable and interesting notes. Ragon died at Paris about the year 1866.

In the preface to his Orthodoxie, he had announced his intention to crown his Masonic labors by writing a work to be entitled Les Fastes Initiatiques, in which he proposed to give an exhaustive view of the Ancient Mysteries, of the Roman Colleges of Architects and their successors, the building corporations of the Middle Ages, and of the institution of Modern or Philosophic Freemasonry at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This was to constitute the first volume.

The three following volumes were to embrace a history of the Order and of all its Rites in every country. The fifth Volume was to be appropriated to the investigation of other secret associations, more or less connected with Freemasonry; and the sixth and last volume was to contain 3 General Tiler or Manual of all the known rites and Degrees. Such a work would have been an inestimable boon to the Masonic student, but Ragon unfortunately began it too late in life. He did not live to complete it, and in 1868 the unfinished manuscript was purchased, by the Grand Orient of Franee, from his heirs for a thousand francs.

It was destined to be quietly deposited in the archives of that Body, because, as it was confessed, no Freemason could be found in France who had ability enough to supply its lacunae or missing material and prepare it for the press. Ragon’s theory of the origin of Freemasonry was that its primitive idea is to be found in the initiations of the Ancient Mysteries, but that for its present form it is indebted to Elias Ashrnole, who fabricated it in the seventeenth century.

RAGOTZKY, CARL AUGUST

A German who was distinguished for his labors in Freemasonry, and for the production of several works of high character, the principal of which were Der Freidenker in der Maurerei oder Freimüthige Briefe über wichtige Gegenstände in der Frei-Maurerei, that is, The Free-thinker in Freemasonry, or Candid Letters on important subjects in Freemasonry, published at Berlin, in 1793, in an octavo volume of three hundred and eleven pages, of which a second edition appeared in 1811; and a smaller work entitled Ueber Maurerische Fresher fur eingeweihte und uneingeweihte, that is, An Essay on Masonic Liberty, for Initiated and Uninitiated Readers, published in 1792. He died on January, 1823.

RAINBOW FOR GIRLS, ORDER OF

A organization planned to sow the seeds of love, law, religion, patriotism, and service in the hearts of the girlhood of America for harvest in the coming years. These sentiments prompted a Brother, the Rev. William Mark Sexson, McAlester, Oklahoma, then the Grand Chaplain of his State, to write the ritual and lay the foundations of the Order of the Rainbow for Girls.

The first exemplification of the ritual wee on April 6, 1922, when a class of more than seventy-five girls was initiated. In the four following years the Order was extended to thirty-one States of the Union and grew to a membership of forty thousand The Order of the Rainbow is not Freemasonry nor is it Eastern Star, but it is very dear to each one off these fraternities.

Local Lodges or Bodies are called Assemblies, and before an Assembly can be instituted it must be sponsored by a Masonic or an Eastern Star organization that will promise to look after its welfare. Its members, girls from 13 to 18, must be children of Masonic or Eastern Star families, or the friends and chums of such children. This is the only relationship it has to Freemasonry though it has no secrets from Freemasons or Stars and they are free to attend the meetings of any Assembly.

RAINBOW, THE MOST ANCIENT ORDER OF THE

A secret association existing in Moorfields in 1760

RAINS

It was a custom among the English Freemasons of the middle of the eighteenth century, when conversing together on Freemasonry, to announce the appearance of a profane by the warning expression It rains. The custom was adopted by the German and French Freemasons, with the equivalent expression, Es regnet and II pluie. Baron Tschoudy, who condemns the usage, says that the latter refined upon it by designating the approach of a female by II neige, the French for It snows. Doctor Oliver says (Revelations of a Square, page 142) that the phrase It rains, to indicate that a Cowan is present and the proceedings must be suspended, is derived from the ancient punishment of an eavesdropper, which was to place him under the eaves of a house in rainy weather, and to retain him there till the droppings of water ran in at the collar of his coat and out at his shoes.

RAISED

When a candidate has received the Third Degree, he is said to have been raised to the sublime Degree of a Master Mason. The expression refers, materially, to a portion of the ceremony of initiation, but symbolically, to the resurrection, which it is the object of the Degree to exemplify.

A curious sidelight upon the use of the expression is that obtained by considering the word as also meaning the acceptance or adoption of the candidate officially by the Fraternity. There is an ancient and striking parallel for this understanding. Among the Roman customs connected with the birth of children that was the most remarkable which left it to the arbitrary will of the father whether his new-born child should be preserved or left to perish. The midwife always placed the child on the ground. If the father wished to preserve its life he raised it from the ground and this was said to be tollere infantem, the raising of the child. This was an intimation of his purpose to acknowledge and educate it as his own If the father did not choose to do this, he left the child on the ground, and thus expressed his wish to expose or abandon it, exponere. This exposing of a newborn child was an unnatural custom borrowed from the Greeks by which children were left in the streets and abandoned to their fate (see Fiske’s Classical Antiquities, page 287).

Some highly significant pictorial instances of resurrection are found in old churches. The altar picture from Holyrood at Edinburgh, Scotland (see illustration), is a good example. Here the First Person of the Trinity supports or raises the Son. Usually the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, is also represented symbolically in such cases, the dove being as a rule selected to indicate the complete threefold unity of the Godhead. The altar symbolism from Holyrood is therefore a typical specimen of the Trinity portrayal and of the resurrection occurrence.

Brother J. E. Barton discusses the symbolism of the other illustration, the Trinity Boss in the West Porch of Peterborough Cathedral in England. This porch is from architectural details dated about 1375. Old writers would call the porch a “Galilee,” a ritualistic provision for such occasions as Palm Sunday, and for processions generally on the Sabbath. The promise to the disciples, that the risen Christ should go before them into Galilee, is no doubt the origin of the name; for the chief ecclesiastical dignitary, who brought up the rear of the procession, here went first, and entered the porch through the ranks of his subordinates, as a Master in taking his seat in the Lodge.

Three probabilities are to be taken into account in considering this boss. It is the central ornament of a porch having special reference to the feast of the Resurrection. It was designed by a Gild—itself probably dedicated to the Holy Trinity, as at the Newark Parish Church, which would naturally wish the porch dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Its designers were inspired by a desire to connect, in a manner not unnatural to Freemasons with their own grades and ritual, the two ideas of the Holy Trinity and of the Resurrection.

Presumably the Masonic Gild, perhaps the chief Gild in Peterborough, was about to vault the porch it had given, and looked about for a suitable composition for its main boss. The first and inevitable suggestion was a Trinity subject, so common in sculptures stained glass, and on monumental brasses The usual Trinity is a design of God the Father sups porting the Son upon the Cross, with the Holy Spirit added in the form of a Dove. Next it was suggested that the Trinity should here be modified in form, so as to deplete a Risen, not a Crucified Lord, as being suitable to a Galilee Porch.

Last came the unifying suggestion that by the use Of a Masonic symbol the Resurrection of Christ, in the Trinity subject, should be marked at the point where Our Lord is about to be raised to Heaven by the hands of the Father; one hand gripping, and the other blessing. Hence the Second Person in the Trinity, who has already passed from the earthly Incarnation, is here at a singular position. His pierced hands show Him already crucified and rising from the grave, with the attitude common to medieval paintings of the Resurrection and the loin cloths still about Him. He is about to be raised to the sublime Degree, and God the Father, in order more expressly to note the Masonic idea, is figured like the Sun at its meridian.

What more appropriate than two figures typical of the Elect, redeemed by Christ, and raised and crowned with Him? Hence the two crowned figures, one apparently an ecclesiastic with an amice, whose diadems have the Trinity symbol of the trefoil, like the Father’s crown in the Chester boss. In this Peterborough boss, indeed, each foil of the trefoil is itself trefoiled, as if to insist on the threefold notion.

RANDOLPH, PEYTON

First president of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Born 1721; died October 2, 1775. He received a Warrant from Lord Petrie, Grand Master of England, on November 6, 1773, constituting him Master of Williamsburg Lodge No. 6, Williamsburg Virginia. Provincial Grand Master of Virginia in 1774 and until his death (see Washington zhe Man and the Mason, Charles H. Callahan, page o54, etc.; New Age, November, 1924; Masonry in the Formation of our Government—1761-1,99, Philip A. Roth, page 31).

RAPHAEL

The Hebrew interpretation is the Sealing of God. The title of an officer in a Rose Croix Chapter- The name of the angel, under the Cabalistieal system, that governed the Planet Mercury. A messinger.

RATISBON

A city of Bavaria, in which two Masonic Congresses have been held. The first was convoked in 1459, by Jost Dotzinger, the Master of the Works of the Strasburg cathedral. It established some new laws for the government of the Fraternity in Germany. The second was ealled in 1464, by the Grand Lodge of Strasburg, principally to define the relative rights of, and to settle existing difficulties between, the Grand Lodges of Strasburg, Cologne, Vienna, and Bera (see Stone Masons of the Middle Ages).

RAWLINSON MANUSCRIPT

In 1855, the Rev. J. S. Sidebotham, of New College, Oxford, published in the Freemasons Monthly Magazine a series of interesting extracts from a manuscript volume which he stated was in the Bodleian Library, and which he described as seeming “to be a kind of Masonic album, or commonplace book, belonging to Brother Richard Rawlinson, LL.D. and F.R.S., of the following Lodges: Sash and Cocoa-tree, Moorfields, 37; Saint Paul’s Head, Ludgate Street, 40; Rose Tavern, Cheapside, and Oxford Arms, Ludgate Street, 94; in which he inserted anything that struck him either as useful or particularly amusing. It is partly in manuscript, partly in print, and comprises some ancient Masonic Charges, Constitutions, forms of summons, a list of all the Lodges of his time under the Grand Lodge of England, whether in London, the country, or abroad; together with some extracts from the Grub street Journal, the General Evening Post, and other journals of the day. The dates range from 1724 to 1740” (Freemasons Monthly Magazine, 1855, page 81). A later inquiry as to his membership disclosed that Richard Rawliason was a member of four Lodges, the one held at Sash and Cocoa-tree, the one at Saint Paul’s Head, the Barbican, and the Oxford University Arms~ He served as Grand Steward in 1734.

Among the materials thus collected is one which bears the following title: The Freemasons Constitution, Copied from an Old Manuscript in the possession of Doctor Rawlinson. This copy of the Old Constitutions does not differ materially in its contents from the other old manuscripts, but its more modern spelling and phraseology would seem to give it a later date, which may be from 172S50. In a note to the statement that King Athelstan “caused a roll or book to be made, which declared how this science was first invented, afterwards preserved and augmented, with the utility and true intent thereof, which roll or book he commanded to be read and plainly recited when a man was to be made a Freemason,” Doctor Rawlinson says: “One of these rolls I have seen in the possession of Mr. Baker, a carpenter in Moorfields.” The title of the manuscript in the scrap-book of Rawlinson is The Freemasons’ Constitution, Copied from an Old Manuscript in the possession of Doctor Rawlinson. The original manuscript has not yet been traced, but possibly if found would be of about the end of the seventeenth century.

Richard Rawlinson, LL.D., was a celebrated antiquary, who was born in London about 1689, and died April 6, 1755. He was the author of a Life of Anthony Wood, published in 1711, and of The English Topographer, published in 1720. Doctor Rawlinson was consecrated a Bishop of the conjuring communion of the Church of England, March 25, 1728. He was an assiduous collector of old manuscripts, invariably purchasing, sometimes at high prices, all that were offered him for sale. In his will, dated June 2, 1752, he bequeathed the whole collection to the University of Oxford. The manuscripts were placed in the Bodleian Library, and still remain there. In 1898, Dr. W. J. Chetwode Crawley published in the Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xi), a full account of the Rawlinson manuscripts, in which he shows (page 15) that the collection was not reallv made by Doctor Rawlinson, but by one Thomas Towl.

RAWLINSON, RICHARD

An English scholar, Doctor of Civil Law and Fellow of the Royal Society, noted for his large and valuable collections of old manuscripts anal books on Freemasonry and other subjects. Born at London in 1689, initiated about 1726 his name appearing in rosters of four London Lodges. Grand Steward in 1734. He was nonjuring bishop of the Church of England, consecrated March 95, 1728. His Masonic literature is now deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, many interesting old documents being included, one Copy of the Old Constitutions said to be as old as 1700 and the original of which has never been found. Brother Rawlinson died April 6, 1755. There is an interesting letter from Doctor Rawlinson to Mr. Thomas Towl at AGr. Heath’s near the Black Dog in Shoreditch. The letter is as follows:

Dear Sir: As you preserve all relating to the Subjeet of Masonry I send you this from Mr. Whitfields Continuation of his Journal, London. 1739, October, page 6. Saavannah in Georgia Friday 24th June, 1738

To the great surprise of myself and people was enabled to read Prayers and preach with power before the Free Masons, with whom I afterwards dined, and was used with the utmost Civility. May God make therm Sertants of Christ, and then, and rzot tic then wig thev be free indeed What notions this Gent has of the craft you may guess by his surprise and wish. I am, sir, yours to command, 13 January, 1738/9. R. R.

Brother W. Wonnacott, late Grand Librarian of United Grand Lodge of England, has called our attention to the two dates given in this letter from Doctor Rawlinson to his Vriend. They do not harmonize and evidently some mistake has been made in the figures. Another error as to the actual day is commented upon by Brother Crawley: Opportunity may here be taken to draw attention to the singular error in Dr. Richard Rawlinson’s letter to Towle. in which the Freemasons’ hospitality is quoted from George Whitfield’s Dxarv; the 24th June, 1738, did not fall on a Friday but on a Saturday. The misdating Of the entry is probably due to a clerical exTor, for there is not wanting contemporary evidence that the incident occurred on Saturday, June 24th, 1738. (See foot-note, Brother W. J. Chetwode Crawley’s article on Reverend John Wesley and the Lodge at Downpatrick, in the Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xv, page 105.)

RAYMOND, EDWARD ASA

Born February 6, 1791, in Golden, Massachusetts, and died in Brookline, Massachusetts, on August 4, 1864. For more than forty years Brother Ravmond was an active member of the Masonic Order, having become a Freemason January 15, 1816, in Amicable Lodge, Cambridge and being admitted a member of Saint Johns Lodge, Boston, April 2, 1836. He affiliated with the Massachusetts Lodge in 1843 on November 24. In the course of his Masonic career, Brother Raymond, who was the possessor of a large fortune, acted as Grand High Priest of the Grand Chapter, Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of Massachusetts, and Grand Commander of the Supreme Council for the Northern Jurisdiction of the United States. The period during which he served as Grand Master of Massachusetts dated from December 27, 1848, and ended December 30, 1851. The Memorial Volume of the 125th Anniversary of the Massachusetts Lodge is dedicated in honor of Brother Raymond.

RECEIVED AND ACKNOWLEDGED

A term applied to the initiation of a candidate into the Sixth or Most Excellent Master’s Degree of the American Rite (see Acknowledged).

RECEPTION

The ceremony of initiation into a Degree of Freemasonry is called a reception.

RECIPIENT

The French call the candidate in any Degree the Racipiendaire, or Recipient.

RECOGNITION, MODES OF

Smith says Use and Abuse of Masonry, page 46) that at the institution of the Order, to each of the Degrees “a particular distinguished test was adapted, which test, together with the explication, was accordingly settled and communicated to the Fraternity previous to their dispersion, under a necessary and solemn injunction to secrecy; and they have been most cautiously preserved and transmitted down to posterity by faithful Brethren ever since their emigration.” Hence, of all the landmarks, the modes of recognition are the most legitimate and unquestioned. They should admit of no variation, for in their universality consist their excellence and advantage.

Yet such variations have unfortunately been admitted, the principal of which originated about the middle of the eighteenth century, and were intimately connected with the division of the Fraternity in England into the t vo conflicting societies of the Ancient and the Moderns; and although by the reconciliation in 1813 uniformity was restored in the United Grand Lodge which was then formed, that uniformity did not extend to the subordinate Bodies in other countries which had derived their existence and their different modes of recognition from the two separated Grand Lodges; and this was, of course, equally applicable to the higher degrees which sprang out of them.

Thus, while the modes of recognition in the York and Scottish Rites are substantially the same, those of the French or Modern Rite differ in almost everything. In this there is a Password in the First Degree unrecognized by the two other Rites, and all afterwards are different.

Again, there are important differences in the York and American Rites, although there is sufficient similarity to relieve American and English Freemasons from any embarrassment in mutual recognition. Although nearly all the Lodges in the United States, before the Revolution of 1776, derived their existence from the Grand Lodges of England, the American Freemasons do not use the multitude of signs that prevail in the English system, while they have introduced, in the opinion of Brother Mackey, through the teachings of Webb, the Due Guard, which is totally unknown to English Freemasonry. Looking to these differences, the Masonic Congress of Paris, held in 1856, recommended, in the seventh proposition, that “Masters of Lodges, in conferring the degree of Master Mason, should invest the candidate with the words, signs, and grips of the Scottish and Modern Rites.” This proposition, if it had been adopted, would have mitigated, if it did not abolish, the evil; but, unfortunately, it did not receive the general concurrence of the Craft.

As to the antiquity of modes of recognition in general, it may be said that, from the very nature of things, there was always a necessity for the members of every secret society to have some means for recognizing a Brother that should escape the detection of the uninitiated. We find evidence in several of the classic writings showing that such a custom prevailed among the initiated in the pagan mysteries. Livy tells us (xxxi, 14) of two Acarnanian youths who accidentally entered the temple of Ceres during the celebration of the mysteries, and, not having been initiated, were speedily detected as intruders, and put to death by the managers of the temple. They must, of course, have owed their detection to the fact that they were not in possession of those modes of recognition which were known only to the initiated.

That they existed in the Dionysiac rites of Bacchus we learn from Plautus, who, in his Miles Gloriosus (act iv, scene ii), makes Misphidippa say to Pyrgopolonices, Cedo signum si harunc Baccharum es, that is, Give the sign, if you are one of these Bacchae.

Jamblichus (On the Pythagorean Life) tells the story of a disciple of Pythagoras, who, having been taken sick, on a long journey, at an inn, and having exhausted his funds, gave, before he died, to the landlord, who had been very kind to him, a paper, on which he had written the account of his distress, and signed it with a symbol of Pythagoras. This the landlord affixed to the gate of a neighboring temple. Months afterward another Pythagorean, passing that way, recognized the secret symbol, and, inquiring into the tale, reimbursed the landlord for all his trouble and expense.

Apuleius, who was initiated into the Osirian and Isiac Mysteries, says, in his Defenno, “if any one is present who has been initiated into the same secret rites as myself, if he will give me the sign, he shall then be at liberty to hear what it is that I keep with such care.” But in another place he is less cautious, and even gives an inkling of what was one of the signs of the Osirian Initiation. For in his Golden Ass (book xi) he says that in a dream he beheld one of the disciples of Osiris, “who walked gently, with a hesitating step, the ankle of his left foot being slightly bent, in order, no doubt, that he might afford me some sign by which I could recognize him.” The Osirian Initiates had then, it seems, like the Freemasons, mystical steps.

That the Gnostics had modes of recognition we learn from Saint Epiphanius, himself at one time in early life a Gnostic, who says in his Pananum, written against the Gnostics and other heretics, that “on the arrival of any stranger belonging to the same belief, they have a sign given by one to another. In holding out the hand, under pretense of saluting each other, they feel and tickle it in a peculiar manner underneath the palm, and so discover if the newcomer belongs to the same sect. Thereupon, however poor they may be, they serve up to him a sumptuous feast, with abundance of meats and wine.”

We do not refer to the fanciful theories of Doctor Oliver—the first one is most probably a joke, and therefore out of place in his Symbolical Dictionary founded on passages of Homer and Quintus Curtius, that Achilles and Alexander of Macedon recognized the one Priam and the other the High Priest by a sign. But there are abundant evidences of an authentic nature that a system of recognition by signs, and words, and grips has existed in the earliest times, and, therefore, that they were not invented by the Freemasons, who borrowed them, as they did much more of their mystical system, from antiquity.

RECOMMENDATION

The petition of a candidate for initiation must be recommended by at least two members of the Lodge. Preston requires the signature to be witnessed by one person; he does not say whether the witness must be a member of the Lodge or not, and that the candidate must be proposed in open Lodge by a member.

Webb says that “the candidate must be proposed in form, by a member of the Lodge, and the proposition seconded by another member.” Cross says that the recommendation glib to be signed by two members of the Lodge,” and he dispenses with the formal proposition.

These gradual changes, none of them, however, substantially affecting the principle, have at last resulted in the present simpler usage, which is, for two members of the Lodge to affix their names to the petition, as recommenders of the applicant.

The petition for a Dispensation for a new Lodge, as preliminary to the application for a Warrant of Constitution, must be recommended by the nearest Lodge. Preston says that it must be recommended “by the Masters of three regular Lodges adjacent to the place where the new Lodge is to be held.” This is also the language of the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. The Grand Lodge of Scotland requires the recommendation to be signed “by the Masters and officers of two of the nearest Lodges.” The modern Constitution of the Grand Lodge of England requires a recommendation “by the officers of some regular Lodge,” without saying anything of its vicinity to the new Lodge. The rule now universally adopted is, that it must be recommenced by the nearest Lodge (see Doctor Mackey’s revised Jurisprudence of Freemasonry).

RECONCILIATION, LODGE OF

When the two contending Grand Lodges of England, known as the Ancient and the Moderns, resolved, in 1813 under the respective Grand Mastership of the Dukes of Rent and Sussex, to put an end to all differences and to form a United Grand Lodge, it was provided in the fifth Article of Union, that each of the two Grand Masters should appoint nine Master Masons to meet at some convenient place; and each party having opened a just and perfect Lodge in a separate apartment, they should give and receive mutually and reciprocally the obligations of both Fraternities and being thus duly and equally enlightened in both forms, they should be empowered and directed to hold a Lodge, under the Warrant or Dispensation to be entrusted to them, and to be entitled the Lodge of Reconciliation.

The duty of this Lodge was to visit the several Lodges under both Grand Lodges, and to instruct the officers and members of the same in the forms of initiation, obligation, etc., in both, so that uniformity of working might be established. The Lodge of Reconciliation was constituted on the 27th of December, 1813, the day on which the Union was perfected. This Lodge was only a temporary one, and the duties for which it had been organized having been performed, it ceased to exist by its own limitation in 1816. (For a full account of this Lodge and its work see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xxiii, 1910.)

RECONSIDERATIONS MOTION FOR

A motion for reconsideration can only be made in a Grand Lodge, Grand Chapter, or other Grand Body, on the same day or the day after the adoption of the motion which it is proposed to reconsider. In a Lodge or other subordinate body, it can only be made at the same meeting. It cannot be moved by one who has voted in the minority.

It cannot be made when the matter to be reconsidered has passed out of the control of the body, as when the original motion was for an appropriation which has been expended since the motion for it was passed. A motion for reconsideration is not debatable if the question proposed to be reconsidered is not. It cannot always be adopted by a simple majority vote. It may be postponed or laid upon the table.

If postponed to a time definite, and when that time arrives is not acted upon, it cannot be renewed. If laid upon the table, it cannot be taken up out of its order and now second motion for reconsideration can be offered while it lies upon the table, hence to lay a motion for reconsideration on the table is considered as equivalent to rejecting it. When a motion for reconsideration is adopted, the original motion comes up immediately for consideration, as if it had been for the first time brought before the body, in the form which it presented when it was adopted.

RECONSIDERATION OF THE BALLOT

When the petition of a candidate for initiation has been rejected, it is not permissible for any member to move for a reconsideration of the ballot. The folloWing four principles set forth in a summary way the doctrine of Masonic parliamentary law on this subject:

REFORMED MASONIC ORDER OF MEMPTIIS, OR RITE OF THE GRAND LODGE OF PHILADELPHES

See Memphis, Rite of

REFORMED RITE

This Rite was established in 1872, by a Congress of Freemasons assembled at Wilhelmsbad, in Germany, over whose deliberations Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, presided as Grand Master. It was at this Convention that the Reformed Rite was first established, its members assuming the title of the Beneficent Knights of the Holy City because they derived their system from the French Rite of that name. It was called the Reformed Rite, because it professed to be a reformation of a Rite which had been established in Germany about a quarter of a century before under the name of the Rite of Strict Observance. This latter Rite had advanced a theory in relation to the connection between Freemasonry and the Order of Knights Templar, and traced the origin of our institution to those Knights at the Crusades This hypothesis the Convention at Wilhelmsbad rejected as unfounded in history or correct tradition. By the adoption of this Rite, the Congress gave a death-blow to the Rite of Strict Observance.

The Reformed Rite is exceedingly simple in its organization, consisting only of five Degrees, namely:

1. Entered Apprentice;

2. Fellow Craft;

3. Master Mason;

4. Scottish Master;

5. Knight of the Holy City.

The last Degree is, however, divided into three sections, those of Novice, Professed Brother, and Knight, which really gives seven Degrees to the Rite.

REFRESHMENT

In Masonic language, refreshment is opposed in a peculiar sense to labor. While a Lodge is in activity it must be either at labor or at refreshment. If a Lodge is permanently closed until its next eommunication, the intervening period is one of abeyance, its activity for Masonic duty having for the time been suspended; although its powers and privileges as a Lodge still exist, and may be at any time resumed. But where it is only temporarily closed, with the intention of soon again resuming labor, the intermediate period is called a time of refreshment, and the Lodge is said not to be closed, but to be called from labor to refreshment. The phrase is an old one, and is found in the early rituals of the eighteenth Century. Callingfrom labor to refreshment differs from closing in this, that the ceremony is a very brief one, and that the Junior Warden then assumet the eo trol of the draft, in token of which he erects his column on his stand or pedestal, while the Senior Warden lays his down. This is reversed in caging on, in which the ceremony is equally brief.

The word refreshment no longer bears the meaning among Freemasons that it formerly did. It signifies not necessarily eating and drinking, but simply cessation from labor. A Lodge at refreshment may thus be compared to any other society when in a recess During the whole of the eighteenth century, and part of the next, a different meaning was given to the word arising from a now obsolete usage, which Doctor Oliver (Masonic Jurisprudence, page 210) thus describes:

The Lodges in ancient times were not arranged according to the praetise in use amongst ourselves at the present day. The Worshipful Master, indeed, stood in t he East, but both the Wardens were plaeed in the West the South was occupied by the senior Entered Apprentiee, whose business it was to obey the instructions of the Master, and to welcome the visiting Brethren, after has ing duly ascertained that they were Freemasons. The junior Entered Apprentice was placed in the north to present the intrusion of cowans and eavesdroppers; and a long table, and sometimes two, where the Lodge was numerous, were extended in paraUel lines from the pedestal to the place where the Wardens sat, on which appeared not only the emblems of Freemasonry, but also materials for refreshments—for in those days every section of the lecture had its peculiar toast or sentiment

and at its conclusion the Lodge was called from labour to refreshment by certain ceremonies, and a toast, teellnieallv called “the Charge,” was drunk in a bumper xvitll the bonours, and not unfrequently aceonlpanied ivy an appropriate song. After which the Lodge M as caned from refreshment to labour, and another section was delivered with the like result. At the present day, the banquets of Lodges, When they talie place, are alxvays held after the Lodge is closed; although they are still supposed to be under the charge of the Junior Warden. When modern Lodges are called to refreshment, it is either as a part of the ceremony of the Third Degree, or for a brief period; sometimes extending to more than a day when labor, which had not been finished, is to be resumed and concluded.

The mythical history of Freemasonry says that high twelve or noon was the hour at Solomon’s Temple when the Craft were permitted to suspend their labor, which was resumed an hour after. In reference to this myth, a Lodge is at all times supposed to be called from labor to refreshment at “high twelve,” and to be called on again “one hour after high twelve.”

REGALIA

Strictly speaking the word regalia from the Latin, regalia, meaning royal things, signifies the ornaments of a king or queen, and is applied to the apparatus used at a coronation, such as the crown, scepter, cross, mound, etc. But it has in modern times been loosely employed to signify almost any kind of ornaments. Hence the collar and jewel, and sometimes even the apron, are called by many Freemasons the regalia. The word has the early authority of Preston. In the second edition of his Illustrations (1775), when on the subject of funerals, he uses the expression, “the body, with the regalia placed thereon, and two swords crossed.” And at the end of the service he directs that “the regalia and ornaments of the deceased, if an officer of a Lodge, are returned to the Master in due form, and with the usual ceremonies.” Regalia cannot here mean the Bible and Book of Constitutions, for there is a place in another part of the procession appropriated to them.

It might have been supposed that, by regalia, Preston referred to some particular decorations of the Lodge, had not his subsequent editors, Jones and Oliver, both interpolated the word “other” before ornaments, so as to make the sentence read “regalia and other ornaments,” thus clearly indicating that they deemed the regalia a part of the ornaments of the deceased. The word is thus used in one of the headings of the modern Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of England. But in the text the more correct words “clothing and insignia” (Rule 282) are employed. There is, however, so great an error in the use of the word regalia to denote Masonic clothing, that it would be better to avoid it.

REGENERATION

In the Ancient Mysteries the doctrine of regeneration was taught by symbols: not the theological dogma of regeneration peculiar to the Christian church, but the philosophical dogma, as a change from death to life—a new birth to immortal existence. Hence the last day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, when the initiation was completed, was called, says Court de Gebelin (Monde Primitive analyst et compare avec be Monde Moderne, the Primitive World anslysed and compared with the Modern World iv, page 322) the day of regeneration. This is the doctrine in the Masonic mysteries, and more especially in the symbolism of the Third Degree. We must not say that the Freemason is regenerated when he is initiated, but that he has been indoctrinated into the philosophy of the regeneration, or the new birth of all things—of light out of darkness, or life out of deathof eternal life out of temporal death.

REGENT

The Fourth Degree of the Lesser Mys eries of the llluminati.

REGHELLINI, M.

A learned Masonic writer, who was born of Venetian parents on the Island of Scio, whence he was usually styled Reghellini de Scio. the date of 1750, at which his birth has been placed, is certainly an error. Michaud supposes that it is twenty or thirty years too soon. The date of the publication of his earliest works would indicate that he could not have been born much before 1780. After receiving a good education, and becoming especially proficient in mathematics and chemistry, he settled at Brussels, where he appears to have spent the remaining years of his life, and wrote various works, which indicate extensive research and a lively and, perhaps, a rather ill-directed imagination. In 1834 he published a work entitled Examen du Mosaisme et du Christianisme, Examination of Mosaicism and of Christianity, whose bold opinions were not considered as very orthodox. He had previously become attached to the study of Masonic antiquities, old and in 1826 published a work in one volume, entitled esprit du dogne de la Franc-Maçonnerie. recherches sur son origine et celle de ses différents rites, Spirit of the Dogma of Freemasonry, Studies on its origin and theses of its various Rites.

He subsequently still further developed his ideas on this Subject, and published at Paris, in 1833, a much larger work, in three volumes, entitled, La Maçonnerie, considérée comme le résultat des Religions Egyptienne, Juive et Chrétienne, Freemasonry considered as the result of Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian Religions. In this work he seeks to trace both Freemasonry and the Mosaic religion to the worship that was practised on the banks of the Nile in the time of the Pharaohs. Whatever may be thought of his theory, it must be confessed that he has collected a mass of learned and interesting facts that must be attractive to the Masonic scholar.

From 1822 to 1829 Reghellini devoted his labors to editing the Annales Chronologiques, Litteraires et Historiques de la Maçonnerie des Pays-Bas, Literary and Historical Chronological Record of Freemasonry in the Low Countries, a work that contains much valuable information. However, Brother Woodford was not as assured as was Doctor Mackey that this work may as certainly be accredited to Reghellini, the evidence as to his editorship being less positive than the other particulars here cited.

Outside of Freemasonry, the life of Reghellini is not well known. It is said that in 1848 he became implicated with the political troubles which broke out that year in Vienna, and, in consequence, experienced some trouble. His great age at the time precluded the Likelihood that the statement is true. In his later days he was reduced to great penury, and in August,1855, was compelled to take refuge in the House of Mendicity at BrusseLs, where he shortly afterward died.

REGIMENTAL LODGE

An expression used by Doctor Oliverin his Jurisprudence, to designate a Lodge attached to a regiment in the British Army. The title is not recognized in the English Constitutions, where such a Lodge is always styled a Military Lodge, which see

REGISTER

A list of the officers and members of a Grand or Subordinate Lodge. The registers of Grand Lodges are generally published in this country annually, attached to their Proceedings. The custom of publishing annual registers of subordinate Lodges is almost exclusively confined to the Freemasonry of the Continent of Europe. Sometimes it is called a Registry.

REGISTRAR, GRAND

The term has two meanings:

1. An officer of the Grand Lodge of England, whose principal duty it is to take charge of the seal, and attach it, or cause it to be attached by the Grand Secretary, to documents issued by the Grand Lodge or Grand Master. He also superintends the records of the Grand Lodge, and to take care that the several documents issued be in due form (Constitutions, Rules 31-2).

2. An officer in a Grand Consistory of the Aneient and Accepted Scottish Rite, whose duties are those of Grand Secretary.

REGISTRATION

The modern Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of England require that every Lodge must be particularly careful in registering the names of the Brethren initiated therein, and also in making the returns of its members; as no person is entitled to partake of the general charity, unless his name be duly registered, and he shall have been at least five years a contributing member of a Lodge, except in the following cases, to which the limitation of five years is not meant to extend, namely, shipwreck, or capture at sea, loss by fire, or blindness or serious accident fully attested and proved (see Rule 234).

To prevent injury to individuals, by their being excluded the privileges of Freemasonry through the neglect of their Lodges in not registering their names any Brother so circunwstanced, on producing sufficient proof that he has paid the full fees to his Lodge, including the register fee, shall be capable of enjoying the privileges of the Craft. But the offending Lodge shall be reported to the Board of General Purposes, and rigorously proceeded against for withholding moneys which are the property of the Grand Lodge (see Rule 237). An unregistered member in England is therefore equivalent, so far as the exercise of his rights is concerned, to an unaffiliated Freemason. In the United States of Ameriea the same rule exists of registration in the Lodge books and an annual return of the same to the Grand Lodge, but the penalties for neglect or disobedience are neither so severe nor so well defined.

REGISTRY

The Roll or list of Lodges and their members under the obedience of a Grand Lodge. Such registries are in some cases published annually by the Grand Lodges of the United States at the end of their printed Proceedings.

REGIUS MANUSCRIPT

See Halliwell Manuscript

REGULAR

A Lodge working under the legal authority of a Warrant of Constitution is said to be regular. The word was first used in 1723 in the first edition of Anderson’s Constitutions. In the eighth General Regulation published in that work it is said: “If any set or number of Freemasons shall take Upon themselves to form a Lodge without the Grand Master’s Warrant, the regular Lodges are not to countenance them.” Ragon says (Orthodoxie Maçonnique, page 72) that the word was first heard of in French Freemasonry in 1773, when an Edict of the Grand Orient thus defined it: “A regular Lodge is a Lodge attached to the Grand Orient, and a regular Freemason is a member of a regular Lodge.”

REGULATIONS

See Old Regulations.

REHUM

Called by Ezra the Chancellor. He was probably a Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Judea, who, with Shimshai the Scribe, wrote to Artaxerxes to prevail upon him to stop the building of the second Temple. His name is introduced into some of the advanced Degrees that are connected in their instructions with the seemed Temple.

REINHOLD, KARL LEONHARD

A German philosopher, who was born at Vienna in 1758, and died in 1823. He was associated with Wieland, whose daughter he married, in the editorship of the Deutschen Merkur, German Mercury. He afterward became a professor of philosophy at Kiel, and published Letters on the Philosophy of Kant. He was much interested in the study of Freemasonry, and published, under the pseudonym of Decius, at Leipsic, in 1788, two lectures entitled Die Hebräischen Mysterien oder die älteste religiöse Freimaurerei, that is, The Hebrew Mysteries, or the Oldest Religious Freemasonry. The fundamental idea of this work is, that Moses derived his system from the Egyptian Priesthood. Eichhorn attacked his theory in his Universal Repository of Biblical Literature. Reinhold delivered and published, in 1809, An Address on the Design of Freemasonry, and another in 1820, on the occasion of the reopening of a Lodge at Kiel. This was probably his last Masonic labor, as he died in 1823, at the age of sixty-five years. In 1828, a Life of him was published by his son, a Professor of Philosophy at Jena.

REINSTATEMENT

See Restoration

REJECTION

Under the English Constitutions (Rule 190) three black balls must exclude a candidate; but the by-laws of a Lodge may enact that one or two shall do so. In the United States of America one black ball will reject a candidate for initiation. If a candidate be rejected, he can apply in no other Lodge for admission. If admitted at all, it must be in the Lodge where he first applied. But the time when a new application may be made never having been determined by the general or Common Law of Freemasonry, the rule has been left to the Special enactment of Grand Lodges, some of which have placed it at six months, and some at from one to two years. Where the Constitution of a Grand Lodge is silent on the subject, it is held that a new application has never been specified, so that it is held that a rejected candidate may apply for a reconsideration of his ease at any time. The unfavorable report of the Committee to whom the letter was referred, or a withdrawal of the letter by the candidate or his friends, is considered equivalent to a rejection (see Unanimous Consent).

REJOICING

The initiation of the Ancient Mysteries, like that of the Third Degree of Freemasonry, began in sorrow and terminated in rejoicing. The sorrow was for the death of the hero-god, which was represented in the sacred rites, and the rejoicing was for his resuscitation to eternal life. “Thrice happy,” says Sophocles, “are those who descend to the shades below when they have beheld these rites of initiation.” “The lesson there taught was,” says Pindar, ‘the Divine origin of life, and hence the rejoicing at the discovery of this eternal truth.”

RELIEF

One of the three principal tenets of a Freemason’s profession, and thus defined in the lecture of the First Degree:

To relieve the distressed is a duty incumbent on all men, but particularly on Freemasons, who are linked together by an indissoluble chain of sincere affection. To soothe the unhappy, to sympathize with their misfortunes, to compassionate their miseries, and to restore peace to their troubled minds, is the great aim we have in view. On this basis we form our friendships and establish our connections.

Of the three tenets of a Freemason’s profession, which are Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth, it may be said that Truth is the Column of Wisdom, whose rays penetrate and enlighten the inmost recesses of our Lodge; Brotherly Love, the Column of Strength, which binds us as one family in the indissoluble bond of fraternal affection; and Relief, the Column of Beauty, whose ornaments, more precious than the lilies and pomegranates that adorned the pillars of the porch, are the widow’s tear of joy and the orphan’s prayer of gratitude.

RELIEF ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, MASONIC

See Masonic Relief Association of the United States and Canada.

RELIEF, BOARD OF

The liability to imposition on the charity of the Order, by the application of imposters, has led to the establishment in the larger cities of the United States of America of Boards of Relief. These consist of representatives of all the Lodges, to whom all applications for temporary relief are referred. The members of the Board, by frequent consultations, are better enabled to distinguish the worthy from the unworthy, and to detect attempts at imposition. A similar organization, but under a different name, was long ago established by the Grand Lodge of England, for the distribution of the Fund of Benevolence (see Fund of Benevolence). In New Orleans, Louisiana, the Board of Relief, after twentyfive years of successful operation, was chartered in July, 1854, by the Grand Lodge as Relief Lodge, No. 1, to be composed of the Masters and Wardens of all the Lodges who were united in the objects of the Board (see Masonic Relief Association of the United States and Canada).

RELIGION OF FREEMASONRY

There has been a needless expenditure of ingenuity and talent, by a large number of Masonic orators and essayists, in the endeavor to prove that Freemasonry is not a religion. This has usually arisen from a well-intended but erroneous view that has been assumed of the connection between religion and Freemasonry, and from a fear that if the complete disseverance of the two was not made manifest, the opponents of Freemasonry would be enabled successfully to establish a theory which they have been fond of advancing, that the Freemasons were disposed to substitute the teachings of their Order for the truths of Christianity.

Now we have never for a moment believed that any such unwarrantable assumption, as that Freemasonry is intended to be a substitute for Christianity, could ever obtain admission into any well-regulated mind, and, therefore, us are not disposed to yield on the subject of the religious character of FreemasonrY, quite so much as has been yielded by more timid Brethren. On the contrary, we contend, without any sort of hesitation, that Freemasonry is, in every sense of the word, except one, and that its least philosophical, an eminently religious institution—that it is indebted solely to the religious element it contains for its origin as well as its continued existence, and that without this religious element it would scarcely be worthy of cultivate on by the wise and good. But, that we may be truly understood, it will be well first to agree upon the true definition of religion. There is nothing more illogical than to reason upon undefined terms. Webster has given four distinct definitions of religion:

1. Religion, in a comprehensive sense, includes, he says a belief in the being and perfections of God—in the revelation of His will to man—in man’s obligation to obey His commands—in a state of reward and punishment, and in man’s accountableness to God; and also true godliness or piety of life, with the practise of all moral duties.

2. His second definition is, that religion, as distinct from theology, is godliness or real piety in practise, consisting in the performance of all known duties to God and our fellow-men, in obedience to divine command, or from love to food and His law.

3. Again, he says that religion, as distinct from virtue or morality, consists in the performance of the duties we owe directly to God, from a principle of obedience to His will.

4. Lastly, he defines religion to be any system of faith or worship and in this sense, he says, religion comprehends the belief and worship of Pagans and Mohammedans as well as of Christians—any religion consisting in the belief of a superior power, or powers, governing the world, and in the worship of such power or powers. It is in this sense that we speak of the Turkish religion, or the Jewish religion, as well as of the Christian.

Now, it is plain that, in either of the first three senses in which we may take the word religion, and they do not very materially differ from each other, Freemasonry may rightfully claim to be called a religious institution. Closely and accurately examined, it will be found to answer to any one of the requirements of either of these three definitions. So much does it “include a belief in the being and perfections of God,” that the public profession of such a faith is essentially necessary to gain admission into the Order. No disbeliever in the existence of a God can be made a Freemason. The “revelation of his call to man” is technically called the “spiritual, moral, and Masonic Trestle-Board” of every Freemason, according to the rules and designs of which he is to erect the spiritual edifice of his eternal life.

A “state of reward and punishment” is necessarily included in the very idea of an obligation, which, without the belief in such a state, could be of no binding force or efficacy. And “true godliness or piety of life” is inculcated as the invariable duty of every Freemason, from the inception of the first to the end of the very last Degree that he takes. So, again, in reference to the second and third definitions, all this practical piety and performance of the duties we owe to God and to our fellow men arise from and are founded on a principle of obedience to the divine will. Else whence, or from what other will, could they have arisen?

It is the voice of the G. A. O. T. U. symbolized to us in every ceremony of our ritual and from every portion of the furniture of our Lodge, that speaks to the true Freemason, commanding him to fear God and to love the Brethren. It is idle to say that the Freemason does good simply in obedience to the Statutes of the Order. These very Statutes owe their Sanction to the Masonic idea of the nature and perfections of God, a belief that has come down to us from the earliest history of the Institution, and the promulgation of which idea was the very object and design of its origin.

But it must be confessed that the fourth definition does not appear to be strictly applicable to Freemasonry. It has no pretension to assume a place among the religions of the world as a sectarian “system of faith and worship,” in the sense in which we distinguish Christianity from Judaism, or Judaism from Mohammedanism. In this meaning of the word we do not and can not speak of the Masonic religion, nor say of a man that he is not a Christian, but a Freemason. Here it is that the opponents of Freemasonry have assumed mistaken ground in confounding the idea of a religious Institution with that of the Christian religion as a peculiar form of worship, and in supposing, because Freemasonry teaches religious truth, that it is offered as a substitute for Christian truth and Christian obligation. Its warmest and most enlightened friends have never advanced nor supported such a claim. Freemasonry is not Christianity, nor a substitute for it. It is not intended to supersede it nor any other form of worship or system of faith. It does not meddle with sectarian creeds or doctrines, but teaches fundamental religious truth— not enough to do away with the necessity of the Christian scheme of salvation, but more than enough to show, to demonstrate, that it is, in every philosophical sense of the word, a religious Institution, and one, too, in which the true Christian Freemason will find if he earnestly seeks for them, abundant types and shadows of his own exalted and divinely inspired faith.

The tendency of all true Freemasonry is toward religion. If it make any progress, its progress is to that holy end. Look at its ancient landmarks, its sublime ceremonies, its profound symbols and alle gories—all inculcating religious doctrine, commanding religious observance, and teaching religious truth, and who can deny that it is eminently a religious Institution? But, besides, Freemasonry is, in all its forms, thoroughly tinctured with a true devotional spirit. We open and close our Lodges with prayer; we invoke the blessing of the Most High upon all our labors; we demand of our neophytes a profession of trusting belief in the existence and the superintending eare of God; and we teach them to bow with humility and reverence at His awful name, while His Holy Law is widely opened upon our altars. Freemasonry is thus identified with religion; and although a man may be eminently religious without being a Freemason, it is impossible that a Freemason can be “true and trusty” to his Order unless he is a respecter of religion and an observer of religious principle.

But the religion of Freemasonry is not sectarian It admits men of every creed within its hospitable bosom, rejecting none and approving none for his peculiar faith. It is not Judaism, though there is nothing in it to offend a Jew; it is not Christianity, but there is nothing in it repugnant to the faith of a Christian. Its religion is that general one of nature and primitive revelation—handed down to us from some ancient and Patriarchal Priesthood—in which all men may agree and in which no men can differ. It inculcates the practise of virtue, but it supplies no scheme of redemption for sin. It points its disciples to the path of righteousness, but it does not claim to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” In so far, therefore, it cannot become a substitute for Christianity, but its tendency is thitherward; and, as the handmaid of religion, it may, and often does, act as the porch that introduces its votaries into the temple of divine truth. Freemasonry, then, is indeed a religious institution; and on this ground mainly, if not alone, should the religious Freemason defend it.

To the above observations by Doctor Mackey we may add that the religion of Freemasonry was examined at. some length in a book bearing that title by Brother Josiah Whymper, Past Deputy District Grand Master, Punjab, India. Brother Whymper’s purpose was to draw the attention of Freemasons to the circumstance that the original religious principles of Freemasonry were based on Christian Catholicity. He believed that in a well-meant but, in his judgment, mistaken effort to let Freemasonry be all things to all men this principle had been forgotten. In fact, he had found that some Freemasons denied it altogether, asserting that all distinct profession of Christianity was abandoned in 1717 when the Grand Lodge was founded. Colonel J. J. Boswell raised a question in the Masonic Record of India, 1878, under what authority the Koran was used in Lodges working under the English Constitution. Soon thereafter Brother J. J. Davies, the Worshipful Master of Lodge Ravee at Lahore, in the Punjab, addressed the following letter (see Religion of Freemasonry, page 1) to the Grand Secretary of that District: Allow me to invite your attention to a correspondence which very lately appeared in a Masonic Journal, the Record of Western India, regarding the alleged practice in some Lodges of obligating persons on other than the Sacred Seriptures of the Christian Dispensation. From the correspondence you may observe that opinion on the subject is divided: one Brother who signs himself “P. M. 1215” alleging that the practise is in accordance with the spirit of Masonic law, whilst another Brother, a “W. M.” on the contrary, considers that it is in direct violation of Masonic law: in letter, in spirit, and the practice of antiquity.

As it has hitherto been the practise of Lodge Ravee 1215, English Constitution, to obligate Mohammedan and Hindu candidates respectively on the ” Koran” and ” Shastrass,” and Christians on the ” Bible,” I beg to refer the question and should feel greatly obliged if you would kindly obtain the opinion of the Right Worshipful the District Grand Master, whether, or not, in this respect the conduct of Lodge Ravee is consistent with Masonic principles and Masonic law. In intuiting your attention to the subject, I would respectfully mention that in my opinion the meaning of the words, “Volume of the Saered Law,” is not confined to the Saered Law of the Christian Dispensation; but have a