textfiles/magazines/STB/stb-1925-04.txt

SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.III     April, 1925     No.4 
 
SWADDLING CLOTHES 
 
by: Unknown 
 
You are taught that, as an Entered Apprentice, you are  passing 
through the period of early Masonic youth.  As a  Fellowcraft, should 
you attain that higher estate, you will learn  your condition then, 
is emblematic of manhood; while as a Master  Mason, if it is your 
happy fortune ever to be raised to the  Light, you will learn that 
true Freemasonry makes a man sure of a  well spent life, and gives 
him assurance of a glorious  immortality. 

When newly born into the world, a human baby is the most  helpless of 
all animals.  His first tender years are wholly a  time of learning; 
learning to eat, learning to manage his  members, learning to walk, 
learning to make himself understood,  learning to understand.  The 
period you, as an Entered  Apprentice, must spend before you can 
receive the degree of  Fellowcraft corresponds to these early years 
of childhood; you  must learn to manage your Masonic Members, you 
must learn to  understand Masonic language and to make yourself 
understood in  it. 

The Entered Apprentice is more like a child in an  institution than 
like one in a home.  In the home the child has  the undivided 
attention of his parents; in the institution he  has, necessarily, 
only the divided attention of those who must  mother and father many 
children, and the help he individually  receives is less as the 
number who claim it is greater.  The  lodge is an institution; as an 
Entered Apprentice you will  receive careful instruction in the 
necessary arts of Masonry, in  so far as you are prepared to receive 
them, but, obviously, there  can be no coddling, no tender individual 
attentions to you which  are not also given to all other Entered 
Apprentices of your  lodge. 

One child stands out above another in its development in an  
institution because of its inherent brightness, and because of  its 
willingness to study and to learn.  As an Entered Apprentice  Mason 
you will stand out above your fellows as you pay strict  attention to 
those brethren who are your instructors, and as you  are willing to 
study and learn.  For your monitors, my brother,  no matter how great 
their erudition, and how large their charity  and willingness to 
serve you, can only point for you the path,  and give you those 
elementary instructions in Masonry which are  the minimum with which 
you can walk onward. 

Your feet have been set upon a path.  In your hands has been  thrust 
the staff of ritual, the bread of knowledge and the water  of prayer.  
With these alone you can proceed up the path until  you come to the 
wall marked "Fellowcraft," and the straight gate  through which you 
can pass only if you have digested the bread,  drunk the water and 
still have your staff.  But you can climb  quicker, see more of the 
beauties by the way, and arrive with  greater strength for the next 
highway upon which you will travel,  if you are not content with the 
least which you if you may take  as aids, but demand a greater 
equipment. 

There are books, my brother; many, many books.  First, there  is what 
is known as the Monitor of your jurisdiction; a small  book which 
contains all of the ritual of all of the degrees,  which may be 
printed.  A careful study of it will recall to your  mind much that 
you heard while receiving your first degree, and  suggests many 
questions to your mind; questions which any  thinking candidate must 
ask, and queries which, answered, will  make him a better Entered 
Apprentice.  The answers to many of  these questions you will find in 
many good books on Freemasonry.  

Any Entered Apprentice who will read and ponder a good volume  which 
deals with the first degree of Freemasonry, will approach  the West 
Gate for his Fellowcraft degree in a more humble  attitude and a more 
confident heart than he who is satisfied  merely with his staff, his 
bread and his water. 

For consider, my brother; Freemasonry is old, very old.  
No man knoweth just how old, but deep students of the art have 
gathered unimpeachable evidence; evidence of the character which  
would be convincing in a court of law, that the principles which  
underlie Freemasonry  and which are taught in its symbolism, go back 
beyond the dawn of  written history.  Freemasonry's symbols are found 
wherever the  physical evidences of ancient civilizations are 
unearth.  Secret  orders of all ages, all climes, all peoples, have, 
independently  of each other, sought the Great Truths along the same 
paths, and  concealed what they found in much the same symbols.  
Freemasonry  is the repository of the learning of the ages, a 
storehouse of  the truths of life and death, religion and 
immortality; aye, even  of the truths we know regarding the Great 
Architect of the  Universe, which have been painfully won, word by 
word and line by  line, from the books of nature and of the inquiring 
mind, by  literally thousands of generations of men. 

No man has  mind big enough, quick enough, open enough to  absorb and 
understand in an evening even the introduction to what  Freemasonry 
knows; not in a month of evenings!  No degree, no  matter how 
impressively performed, can possibly take him far  along this road.  
All that the Entered Apprentice degree can do  is to point the way, 
and give you the sustenance by which you may  travel. 

You may travel with your ears closed, and your eyes upon the  ground.  
You will arrive, physically, even as a traveller with  bandaged eyes 
may arrive after a toilsome journey.  But to travel  thus is not to 
learn.  And the Freemason who does not learn, what  sort of Freemason 
is he?  Pin wearer, only; denying himself the  greatest opportunity 
given to man to make of himself truly one of  the greatest 
brotherhood the world has ever known. 

Therefore, my brother entered Apprentice, use the month or  more 
which is given you between this and the Fellowcraft Degree,  not only 
to receive your monitorial instruction and learn, letter  perfect, 
the ritual in which much more is hidden than is  revealed, but also 
to investigate for yourself; to read for your- self; to learn, for 
yourself, the meaning of some of our symbols  and how they came to 
be. 

You will find Masons who will say to you that all of Masonry  which 
any man needs to know is found in the degrees.  So will you  find 
those who say to you that all any man needs to know of God  or 
religion is found in the Great Light which rests upon our Holy  
Altar.  But be not discouraged by these, my brother, nor put your  
faith in the vision of any Mason; the only eyes with which you  may 
truly see are your own; the only faith which is truly  valuable to 
any man, is his own.  Reason it out for yourself;  every man needs an 
education in Holy Writ, to expound for him the  hidden truths which 
are in the Great Light, therefore you require  some writer or student 
to expound for you the hidden truths which  are in Masonry's Ritual 
and Symbols.  But a legion of devoted men  of God have spent 
thousands of years digging in the Book of  Books, and always have 
they discovered some new gold.  With no  irreverence, nor any 
comparison of the fundamentals of  Freemasonry with the Bible, it can 
be said that generations of  men have sought in the mountain which is 
Freemasonry for the gold  which is Truth of God, and found it; and 
that without such  patient and delving, the gold could not be seen.  
Do you then,  dig for yourself, but dig by the light of the lamps lit 
by those  who have gone this way before you. 

This United States of ours has its ritual; its Declaration  of 
Independence, its Constitution, its Bill of Rights.  Doubtless  you 
have read all of these; perhaps in school, you memorized  them, as 
now you must memorize Masonic ritual.  But you would not  contend 
that the mere learning by heart of the Declaration of  Independence 
or the Constitution ever made any man an authority  upon them, nor 
that the foreigner investigating our institutions  for the first time 
could become a good American merely by such  memorization.  We 
require the highest tribunal in all the world,  the supreme Court, to 
interpret to us our own Constitution, and  not yet have any of our 
legislators come to the end of the  meanings of those liberties for 
which we declared when this  country first lifted up its head among 
the nations of the world,  and cried the birth cry. 

As an Entered Apprentice you are barely born, Masonically.   
You must learn, my brother, and learn well, if you are to enter  into 
our heritage.  That which is worth living, in this world, is  worth 
working for; indeed, as you know from your experience in  life, 
anything which you must not work for, turns soon to ashes  in your 
mouth.  Without labor, there can be no rest; without work  there can 
be no vacation; without pain, there can be no pleasure;  without 
sorrow, there is no joy.  And equally true it is, that  while men do 
receive the degrees of Masonry at the hands of their  brethren, there 
is no Freemasonry in a man's heart if he has not  been willing to 
sacrifice some time, give some effort, some  study, ask some 
questions. digest some philosophy, to make it  truly his own. 

A certain ceremony through which you recently passed not  only has 
the immediate and obvious significance of charity to the  deserving; 
a man may be divested of all wealth to teach him  something else than 
the giving of alms and the succoring of the  distressed.  If you will 
suppose yourself marooned upon a desert  island, the only man upon 
land shut in by the sea, you will  readily recognize that all the 
wealth of the Indies might be of  less real value to you than a box 
of matches, a cup of water, a  tool of iron.  The richest man in the 
world could gain nothing  with his gold if he were forced to live at 
the poles of the  earth.  Money is only of value where material 
things may be  obtained by bartering labor.  A man may be moneyless 
and still  wealthy, as you might be upon your desert island if you 
had  tools, nails, and materials with which to build yourself a boat  
in order to make your escape. 

So this ceremony, which you have already been taught, was  not 
performed to trifle with your feeling, should make not only a  deep 
and lasting impression on your mind as to charity and giving  aid, 
but should serve to point out to you that  Freemasonry's  deepest and 
truest treasures are those of the mind and heart; not  to be bought, 
not to be received as a free gift, not to be found,  not to be 
obtained by you in any way whatsoever except by patient  search, and 
willing, happy labor. 

Read, my brother; read symbolism and read a history of  Freemasonry; 
read the Old Charges; read your Monitor.  Read,  study, and digest; 
make you own sum of a store of knowledge which  is Freemasonry's; 
make of yourself an Entered Apprentice in the  hidden as well as the 
literal sense of the word. 

You are called an "Entered Apprentice" when there has been  performed 
over you and with you, a certain ceremony, but you  cannot in reality 
be "entered" unless you are willing to enter.   

There is homely truth in many an old saying.  The horse who is  led 
to water will only drink if he is thirsty; no man can make  him 
swallow if he will not.  Freemasonry, which has conferred  upon you 
the distinction of its First Degree, has brought you  through a green 
pasture and made you to lie down beside a still  water of its truth.  
But there lives not the Grand Master of any  Jurisdiction, all 
powerful in Freemasonry though he is, who can  make you drink of 
those waters; there lives not the man, be he  King, Prince or 
Potentate with no matter what temporal power or  what strength of 
Army or of Wealth, who can force you through the  door your brethren 
have swung wide at your approach. 

The pathway is before you.  The staff, the bread and the  water are 
in your hand.  Whether you will travel blindly and in  want, or 
eagerly and with joy depends only and wholly upon you. 
And very largely upon what you now do, how soon you emerge  from your 
swaddling clothes and how well you learn will depend  the epitaph 
some day to be written of your memory on the hearts  of your fellow 
lodge members; it is for you to decide whether  they will say of you:  
"Just another lodge member," or "A True  Freemason, a Faithful Son of 
Light."