The Universal Language of Freemasonry - ArchiMeD - Johannes ...

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Chapter 10 - Conclusion
A positive view of the Webb Work is expressed by Past Grand High Priest
Pierson, 33d, in his lecture before the Minnesota Royal Arch Chapter, printed in
the Masonic Review N° 27, 1862. He emphasizes the wide-spread popularity of
this system, and his antithesis "from ocean to ocean, from north to south" already
implies a hint of universality:
Nonwithstanding the many attempts to alter, expunge, change and
improve the rite by ambitious men, it remains to-day practically as
Webb arranged it. Fesseler, Schrœder, Swedenborg, Zinnendorf, etc.,
never did a tithe as much toward spreading the rites known by their
names, as did Webb for the American System; whilst their's was
received with but limited favor, his has spread over this broad Union
from ocean to ocean, from north to south.
Why then should not his memory be honored by doing it justice and
naming our system the "Webb Rite?" 2077
In the middle of the 19 th century, however, travelling lecturers boasting to
have the true, the old, or the Webb work, raised many a debate among the
contemporary brethren. The editor of the Masonic Review describes this
symptom thus:
Men of yesterday have assumed to be teachers before they have
properly commenced to learn, and great improvements (?) have been
attempted and then peddled out by "travelling lecturers" - all professing
to have discovered by some wizard process "the old work" - "the Webb
work," etc., etc. Under the different assumptions of "Custodians of the
Work" - "Conservators of the Work" - "Masonic Instructors," etc., this
meddling and mending has reached almost every jurisdiction from the
Hudson to the Mississippi, - creating confusion and discord, setting
aside the work of the fathers and overthrowing well-established
practices. 2078
One of these Conservators whose "meddling and mending" has sown great
discord, was Rob Morris of Kentucky, an intelligent and valuable Freemason,
who, having collected many versions of Masonic rituals existing in America, had
the idea in 1848 not only to unify those, but to recapture the Webb-Prestonian
working, "freezing that into unified rituals." 2079 He eliminated what he
conceived as errors and published the result as Mnemonics, written in cipher and
containing the first three degrees. As already shown in our chapter on cipher
writing, his complicated cipher which had to go together with the "spelling
book" to decipher it terribly failed because the published code came into the
wrong hands. Morris became over-ambitious when trying to introduce ritualistic
2077 Moore, Masonic Review N° 27, 1862, p. 71.
2078 Moore, Masonic Review, N° 26, 1862, p. 102.
2079 CME, p. 567.