As It Was It Still Is!

(The following article was written by Dwight L. Smith, FPS, thirty-six years ago. Has anything changed? Is anyone listening?)

Are we not worshipping at the altar of bigness? Look it in the face: too few lodges, with those Lodges we do have much too large. Instead of devoting our thoughts and energies to ways whereby a new Master Mason may find a sphere of activity within his Lodge, we let him get lost in the shuffle. Then we nag and harangue at him because he does not come to meetings to wander around with nothing to do. We are hard at work to make each Lodge so large that it becomes an impersonal aggregation of strangers -- a closed corporation.

What can we expect when we have permitted Freemasonry to become subdivided into a score of organizations? Look at it. Each organization dependent upon the parent body for its existence, yet each jockeying for a position of supremacy, and each claiming to be the Pinnacle to which any Master Mason may aspire. We have spread ourselves thin, and Ancient Craft Masonry is the loser. Downgraded, the Symbolic Lodge is used only as a springboard. A short-sighted Craft we have been to create in our beloved Fraternity a condition wherein the tail can, and may wag the dog.

Has the American passion for bigness and efficiency dulled the spirit of Masonic charity? The "Box of Fraternal Assistance" which once occupied the central position in every Lodge room has been replaced by an annual per capita tax. That benevolence which for ages was one of the sweetest by-products of the teachings of our gentle Craft has, I fear, ceased to be a gift from the heart and has become the writing of a check. And unless the personal element is there, charity becomes as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

©This article, appearing in the August 1999 edition of "The Philalethes", was copied in its entirety with the express permission of The Philalethes Society.