The law hath not power to strike the virtuous, nor can fortune subvert the wise. Virtue and Wisdom, only, perfect and defend man. Virtue's garment is a sanctuary so sacred, that even Princes dare not strike the man that is thus robed. It is the livery of the King of Heaven. It protects us when we are unarmed; and is an armor that we cannot lose, unless we be false to ourselves. It is the tenure by which we hold of Heaven, without which we are but outlaws, that cannot claim protection. Nor is there wisdom without virtue, but only a cunning way of procuring our own undoing.
Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart.
Amid the howl of more than winter storms,
The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours,
Already on the wing.
In these paragraphs, Pike calls virtue “a sanctuary” that is very sacred. Pike calls virtue an armor that we can never lose UNLESS we be false, or untrue, to ourselves.
“Know Thyself” are two words that many Masons are greeted with within the first minutes of their initiation. As we have studied almost all of 29 degrees, we now begin to more fully understand WHY we must know ourselves, it is because we can find most virtue when we know our personal principles well.
Without a knowledge of who we are individually, and what vices our “self” will be tempted by, we have no real means to ride out the storms that will certainly come to us within our lifetimes as individuals.
As children, parents might have asked us, rhetorically, “well, if EVERYONE ELSE robs a bank, does that mean that YOU should do that, too?"
As we truly begin to know ourselves and what vices could destroy us individually, we beging to truthfully understand the question, and we can truthfully answer that we as individuals should stand rock steady against the immoral actions of the many and we find ways to shine a light of honor and virtue to the darkness of tyranny.
Next
Sir Launcelot thought no chivalry equal to that of Virtue. This word means not continence only, but chiefly manliness, and so includes what in the old English was called souffrance, that patient endurance which is like the emerald, ever green and flowering;
and also that other virtue, droicture, uprightness, a virtue so strong and so puissant, that by means of it all earthly things almost attain to be unchangeable. Even our swords are formed to remind us of the Cross, and you and any other of us may live to show how much men bear and do not die; for this world is a place of sorrow and tears, of great evils and a constant calamity, and if we would win true honor in it, we must permit no virtue of a Knight to become unfamiliar to us, as men's friends, coldly entreated and not greatly valued, become mere ordinary acquaintances.
We must not view with impatience or anger those who injure us; for it is very inconsistent with philosophy, and particularly with the Divine Wisdom that should govern every Prince Adept, to betray any great concern about the evils which the world, which the vulgar, whether in robes or tatters, can inflict upon the brave. The favor of God and the love of our Brethren rest upon a basis which the strength of malice cannot overthrow; and with these and a generous temper and noble equanimity, we have everything. To be consistent with our professions as Masons, to retain the dignity of our nature, the consciousness of our own honor, the spirit of the high chivalry that is our boast, we must disdain the evils that are only material and bodily, and therefore can be no bigger than a blow or a cozenage, than a wound or a dream.
Lofty goals in these paragraphs that defy the knee jerk reactions of human nature to those that have wronged us.
But, as we become more virtuous and begin to KNOW OURSELVES, we can defeat the trappings of out lower nature and rise above what is primal and meld with the highest spiritual aspects of our human nature.
When we meld with our higher spiritual aspects of human nature on an individual basis, we begin to affect society in a slow but certain way. We become examples of kindness that is certainly passed on by those who witness our kind and brave acts.
Next
Look to the ancient days, Sir E-------, for excellent examples of VIRTUE, TRUTH, and HONOR, and imitate with a noble emulation the Ancient Knights, the first Hospitallers and Templars, and Bayard, and Sydney, and Saint Louis; in the words of Pliny to his friend Maximus, Revere the ancient glory, and that old age which in man is venerable, in cities sacred. Honor antiquity and great deeds, and detract nothing from the dignity and liberty of any one. If those who now pretend to be the great and mighty, the learned and wise of the world, shall agree in condemning the memory of the heroic Knights of former ages, and in charging with folly us who think that they should be held in eternal remembrance, and that we should defend them from an evil hearing, do you remember that if these who now claim to rule and teach the world should condemn or scorn your poor tribute of fidelity, still it is for you to bear therewith modestly, and yet not to be ashamed, since a day will come when these who now scorn those who were of infinitely higher and finer natures than
they are, will be pronounced to have lived poor and pitiful lives, and the world will make haste to forget them.
But neither must you believe that, even in this very different age, of commerce and trade, of the vast riches of many, and the poverty of thousands, of thriving towns and tenement houses swarming with paupers, of churches with rented pews, and theatres, opera-houses, custom-houses, and banks, of steam and telegraph, of shops and commercial palaces, of manufactories and trades-unions, the Gold-room and the Stock Exchange, of newspapers, elections, Congresses, and Legislatures, of the frightful struggle for wealth and the constant wrangle for place and power, of the worship paid to the children of mammon, and covetousness of official station, there are no men of the antique stamp for you to revere, no heroic and knightly souls, that preserve their nobleness and equanimity in the chaos of conflicting passions, of ambition and baseness that welters around them.
Pike could be describing our modern day in these paragraphs.
Too often, those who flash the badge of virtue finds themselves scorned by society that treasures “getting” more than giving.
Society at large often applauds those that steal and holds those who seek to bring as the demon.
How could we have fallen so backwards in less than a generation?
We must be the light shining on a hill as the examples of truth and justice as Masons, because if it is not US, who will it be?
I will end here for this session.
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