‘The Freemason’s Creed’

     

What follows was published in the August 5, 1916 edition of The Freemason, one of the wonderful English Masonic periodicals printed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As best I can tell, the editor culled this from either the New Age Magazine issue of March 1915 or from Masonic Tidings, a publication in Knoxville, Tennessee. (That’s what publishing was like back then. People borrowed from each other.)

Enjoy. And Happy New Year!

The Freemason’s Creed.

The following declaration of Masonic belief was presented by Bro. Sidney Gilbreath, a member of the Thirty-Second Degree, at a meeting held recently at Johnson City, Tennessee, U.S.A.:

1. The Mason believes in God, and in the Supreme Ruler are securely founded faiths and hopes. In the God of our Rite are united all the perfected virtues of humanity and presided over by a supreme intelligence and perfect wisdom. His justice and mercy are in equilibrium and absolute harmony. We adore, revere, and love Him because He is worthy of adoration, reverence, and love, and our highest privilege is to honor Him by practicing the virtues.

2. The Mason believes that his soul is immortal, and that, escaping from its material dwelling, it shall, in perfect freedom and with unending opportunities, continue throughout eternity the worthy tasks commenced in life, and begin others not revealed in earth’s visions. We believe the immortal soul begins its life at our birth, and that we must do nothing to degrade it, to dwarf its growth, or weaken its hopes and aspirations while its habitation is human.

3. The Mason believes in religion—in the positive religion that finds its highest expression in doing good, not merely because it is a duty, but because it gives joy; a religion that not only accepts right, but wars against wrong; a religion that acknowledges the Fatherhood of God in the practice of Human Brotherhood.

4. The Mason believes in human friendships, and his Brother is his second self, whose welfare he guards as he protects and guards his own. Through misfortune no estrangement comes, and adversity only strengthens the bonds of affection. The memory of his friend is sacred, and he guards its honor as jealously as he protects the good name of the living.

5. The Mason strives earnestly toward the mastery of his passions, but has forgiveness and charity for the error of others. He dare not indulge in any excesses that would degrade his body, weaken his intellect, or deform his soul. He lends a helping hand to a weaker Brother, and points him to firmer foundations.

6. The Mason hears much, speaks little, and acts well. For a good deed his memory reaches through eternity, for a wrong or weakness forgetfulness comes with the sunset. The good name of a Brother is sacred, and within his own bosom are enfortressed the human frailties of the weak. For evil good is rendered, and strength and superiority are captive to a neighbor’s needs.

7. The Mason is a workman. He avoids idleness. He would become a master of industry and production. The world—material, intellectual, social, spiritual—is the forge where Nature is shaped, the factory where minds are fashioned, the fields where the relationships of men are nurtured, the studio where souls are polished, and in them all the Mason labors seeking the perfect man.

8. The Mason believes in purity of life; he protects virtue and guards the home. To the sacredness of fatherhood and motherhood his truest allegiance is given, and the cry of the orphan and widow to him makes the deepest appeal. To him the home, with all its joys or its griefs, its richness or its needs, its fulness or its emptiness, is ever present with supreme claims. 

9. The Mason is a champion of freedom—freedom in the national life, guaranteed by justice; freedom in work, guarded by the good angels of temperance; freedom in thought and speech, under the banners of prudence; freedom in conscience, with fortitude to meet the judgment of eternity.

10. The Mason believes in the absolute supremacy of the moral forces, and that from their arbitration there can be no appeal. He believes that the three greatest of all the moral forces in the universe are Faith, which is the only true Wisdom, and which is the very foundation of all government; Hope, which is strength, and which ensures against failure in all the worthy ambitions of life; and Charity, which is beauty, and which alone makes possible the animated united effort of men in building with their fellow men the temples of a more perfect life.

With just a little poking around, I see that Bro. Sidney Gordon Gilbreath (April 13, 1869 - January 6, 1961) was both the first president and head of the Department of Education at East Tennessee State Normal School (now East Tennessee State University), founded in 1911 for the purpose of training school teachers for Tennessee, including for what then was called the Masonic Institute.