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

432 LECTURES
LECTURES
between Operative and Speculative Masonry,
which are now referred to the Second Degree,
are there given in the First ; and the dedication
of the Bible, compass, and square is differently
explained .
In the Second Degree, the variations of the
old from the modern lectures are still greater .
The old lecture is, in the first place, very brief,
and much instruction deemed important at
the present day was then altogether omitted .
There is no reference to the distinctions between
Operative and Speculative Masonry
(but this topic is adverted to in the former
lecture) ; the approaches to the middle chamber
are very differently arranged ; and not a
single wordy is said of the fords of the river
Jordan. It must be confessed that the ancient
lecture of the Fellow-Craft is immeasurably
inferior to that contained in the modern
system, and especially in that of Webb .
The Andersonian lecture of the Third Degree
is brief, and therefore imperfect . The
legend is, of course, referred to, and its explanation
occupies nearly the whole of the lecture ;
but the details are meager, and many important
facts are omitted, while there are in other
points striking differences between the ancient
and the present system .
But, after all, there is a general feature of
similarity-a substratum of identity-pervading
the two systems of lectures-the ancient
and the modern-which shows that the
one derives its parentage from the other . In
fact, some of the answers given in the year
1730 are, word for word, the same as those
used in America at the present time .
[Martin Clare and Dunckerley (q . v .) are
often credited with being revisers of the English
ritual and lectures, but as there is no
proof whatever that they had anything to
do with such revision it does not seem
worth while to repeat the well-worn tale here .
-E . L . H .]
[Nothing can be said with any certainty
about the lectures in England until the last
quarter of the eighteenth century, when William
Preston took the matter in hand and
revised or more probably rewrote them entirely
.-E . L. H .]
He divided the lecture on the First Degree
pinto six sections, the Second into four, and the
third into twelve . But of the twelve sections
of the third lecture, seven only strictly appertain
to the Master's Degree, the remaining five
referring to the ceremonies of the Order
which, in the Adierican system are contained
in the Past Master's lectA*e. Neaten has recapitulated
the subjects of these several lectures
in his Illustrations of Masonry ; and if
the book were not now so readily accessible, it
would be worth while to copy his remarks .
It is sufficient, however, to say that he has presented
us with a philosophical system of Masonry,
which, coming immediately after the
unscientific and scanty details which up to his
time had been the subjects of Lodge instructions,
must have been like the bursting forth
of a sun from the midst of midnight darkness .
There was no twilight or dawn to warn the
unexpectant Fraternity of the light that was
about to shine upon them . But at once
without preparation-without any gradual
progress or growth from almost nothing to
superfluity-the Prestonian lectures were
given to the Order in all their fulness of illustration
and richness of symbolism and science,
as a substitute for the plain and almost unmeaning
systems that had previously prevailed
. Not that Freemasonry had not always
been a science, but that for all that time,
and longer, her science had been dormanthad
been in abeyance . From 1717 the Craft
had been engaged in something less profitable,
but more congenial than the cultivation of
Masonic science. The pleasant suppers, the
modicums of punch, the harmony of song, the
miserable puns, which would have provoked
the ire of Johnson beyond anything that Boswell
has recorded, left no time for inquiry into
abstruser matters . The revelations of Dr .
Oliver's square furnish us abundant positive
evidence of the low state of Masonic literature
in those days ; and if we need negative proof,
we will find it in the entire absence of any
readable book on Scientific Masonry, until the
appearance of Hutchinson's and Preston's
works. Preston's lectures were, therefore,
undoubtedly the inauguration of a new era in
the esoteric system of Freemasonry .
These lectures continued for nearly half a
century to be the authoritative text of the
Order in England . But in 1813 the two
Grand Lodges-the "Moderns" and the
"Ancients," as they were called-after years
of antagonism, were happily united, and then,
as the first exercise of this newly combined authority,
it was determined "to revise" the
system of lectures .
This duty was entrusted to the Rev. Dr .
Hemming, the Senior Grand Warden, and the
result was the Union or Hemming lectures,
which are now the authoritative standard of
English Masonry. In these lectures many
alterations of the Prestonian system were
made, and some of the most cherished symbols
of the Fraternity were abandoned, as, for instance,
the twelve grand points, the initiation of
the free born, and the lines parallel . Preston's
lectures were rejected in consequence, it is
said, of their Christian references ; and Dr .
Hemming, in attempting to avoid this error,
fell into a greater one, of omitting in his new
course some of the important ritualistic landmarks
of the Order .
[Nothing definite can be stated about the
lectures used in America until near the end of
the eighteenth century, when a system of lectures
was put forth by Thomas Smith Webb .
-E. L. H.]
The lectures of Webb contained much that
was almost a verbal copy of parts of Preston ;
but the whole system was briefer, and the
paragraphs were framed with an evident view
to facility in committing them to memory . It
is an herculean task to acquire the whole system
of Prestonian lectures, while that of Webb
may be mastered in a comparatively short
time, and by much inferior intellects. There