Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

318 HARMONY
HARODIM
in the middle of the seventeenth century,
and in this he is probably correct .
"The two following folios," says the Rev .
Mr . Woodford, "in the volume (viz ., 33 and
34) are of a very important character, inasmuch
as the secrets of Freemasonry are
referred to in the `obligation' taken by
Initiates, and the sums are recorded which
William Wade give to be a Freemason,'
and others who were admitted members of
the Lodge . The amounts varied from five
shillings to a pound, the majority being
ten shillings and upwards . The fragment
on folio 33 is as follows, and was written
about the same time as the MS . Constitutions
:
" `There is severall words & signes of a
free mason to be reveiled to yu wch as yu will
answr before God at the Great & terrible
day of Judgmt yu keep secret & not to revaile
the same in the heares of any person
or to any but to the Mrs. & fellows of the
said society of free masons so helpe me
God, etc.' "
A facsimile of the MS . has been published
by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge .
There is another MS . in the same collection
marked No . 1492, the date of which is conjectured
to be about 1650, or rather later .
It was copied by Bro . Henry Phillips, and
first published in the Freemasons' Quarterly
Review in 1836, pp . 288-295 . The copy, however,
unfortunately, is not an exact one, as
Mr. E. A. Bond, of the Museum, who compared
a part of the transcript with the original,
says that " the copyist has overlooked
peculiarities in many instances." It is important
in containing the "Oath of Secrecy,"
which is in the following words :
"I, A . B . Doe, in the presence of Almighty
God, and my fellows and Brethren here
present, promise and declare that I will
not at any time hereafter, by any Act, or
Circumstance whatsoever, directly or indirectly
publish, discover, reveale, or make
knowne any of the Secrets, priviledges, or
Counsels of the Fraternity or fellowship of
Freemasonry, which at this time, or any time
hereafter shall be made known unto me ; soe
helpe nice God and the holy contents of this
book. "
A facsimile of this MS . also has been published
by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge .
Harmony . It is a duty especially entrusted
to the Senior Warden of a Lodge,
who is figuratively supposed to preside over
the Craft during the hours of labor, so to
act that none shall depart from the Lodge
dissatisfied or discontented, that harmony
may be thus preserved, because, as the
ritual expresses it, harmony is the strength
and support of all well-regulated institutions.
Harmony, Universal. See Mesmeric
Masonry.
Harnouester. Lord Harnouester is said
to have been elected by the four Lodges of
Paris, as the second Grand Master of France,
in 1736, succeeding the Earl of Derwentwater .
Nothing is known of this nobleman in contemporary
history . Burke makes no allusion
to him in his Extinct Peerages, and probably
the name has undergone one of those indecipherable
mutations to which French
writers are accustomed to subject all foreign
names; indeed, Bro. R. F . Gould, in his Concise
History of Freemasonry (p . 355), considers
that the name may even be a corruption
of "Derwentwater ." [E. L. H.]
Harodim . We owe the Masonic use
of this word to Anderson, who first employed
it in the Book of Constitutions, where he
tells us that "there were employed about
the Temple no less than three thousand and
six hundred Princes or Master Masons to
conduct the work," and in a note he says
that "in 1 Kings v . 16 they are called Harodim,
Rulers or Provosts." (Constitutions,
1723, p. 10 .) The passage here alluded to
may be translated somewhat more literally
than in the authorized version, thus : "Besides
from the chiefs or princes appointed by
Solomon who were over the work, there were
three thousand and three hundred harodim
over the people who labored at the work ."
Harodim, in Hebrew C'1'VI, is a grammatically
compounded word of the plural
form, and is composed of the definite article
1, HAD, the or those, and a participle of
the verb X11, radah, to rule over, and means,
therefore, those who rule over, or overseers .
In the parallel passage of 2 Chronicles ii . 18,
the word used is Menatzchim, which has a
similar meaning. But from the use of this
word Harodim in 1 Kings, and the commentary
on it by Anderson, it has come to
pass that Harodim is now technically used
to signify "Princes in Masonry ." They
were really overseers of the work, and hence
the Masonic use of the term is not altogether
inappropriate . Whoever inspects the two
parallel passages in 1 Kings v . 16 and 2 Chron .
ii. 18, will notice an apparent discrepancy .
In the former it is said that there were three
thousand and three hundred of these overseers,
and in the latter the number is increased
to three thousand and six hundred .
The commentators have noted but not explained
the incongruity . Lee, in his Temple
of Solomon, attempts to solve it by supposing
that "possibly three hundred at a second
review might be added to the number of
officers for the greater care of the business ."
This is not satisfactory ; not more so is the
explanation offered by myself, many years
ago, in the Lexicon of Freemasonry . It is
much more reasonable to suspect a clerical
error of some old copyist which has been
perpetuated . There is room for such an
inadvertence, for there is no very great
difference between TAT ' the Hebrew for three,
and VT, which is six. The omission of the
central letter would create the mistake .
Masonic writers have adhered to the three
thousand and six hundred, which is the
enumeration in Chronicles.
[A degree bearing this name was commonly
conferred by the Lodges in the county of