The limitations under which we labor may be annoying, but they are a blessing in disguise, for they sub-serve our higher interests; on the one hand they obstruct our path, but on the other they are stimulus to work. The dark hours invite the intellectual man to meditation, and the long nights of winter afford him excellent opportunity for study; for although it is possible to obtain a sudden inspiration in busy hours, as a rule it is in the stillness of seclusion and abstraction that we can best collect our thoughts and formulate our ideas.
It is in a darkened Lodge that we are taught the necessity of " the light which is from above," without which indeed our reason would be utterly inadequate for our wants; for, valuable as the light of human reason is as a means of relieving our natural ignorance, it can never be compared with the Infinite Wisdom of the Most High, any more than the flicker of that feeble ray near the W.M. can be compared to the Sun.
At the time we are told that the darkness of the Lodge is emblematical of the valley of the [13] [14] shadow of death, and we are supposed to learn " how to die "; but on reflection we find that the new M.M. is in reality a Candidate for membership in " the G.L. above," which is shown to be an ethereal mansion; that is to say, a Kingdom of light: the dead man comes to live in the truest sense.
We all know from experience what help our Masonic arts give us when we come to deal with the great transcendent realities; we may not comprehend, or fathom them, but we are able to formulate a conception of them; that is, we perceive them as facts in a sort of general outline, although the facts themselves remain inexplicable. As an illustration in point, let us remember that although we live in the prospect of futurity, over our prospect there rests " a mysterious veil " - a gloom or veil of mystery - " which the eye of human reason cannot penetrate," but the thought of our immortality remains.
The popular and uninstructed world may waive
aside our figures of speech and all our symbols as infantile playthings,
but it does so because, at the best, men are as children on the
beach, who think that they understand the ocean, when their knowledge
is limited to the [15] sand and the shells and the seaweeds they
have collected in puddles of their own making. Whether the world
is impressed or not, our symbolism embodies the solution of some
of the most serious of the problems that have agitated the human
mind. The after-life may still be an impenetrable enigma, but
for the M.M. two things are clear, viz., that there is to be a
deliverance from the gloomy tomb and a happy re-union with our
former associates.
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