Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

114 MASONIC DEGREES,
has never been examined. It is difficult to conceive what
they are doing, unless they are helping the lodges, as
Harry and Dick were helping John to do nothing.
It must strike every one as mysterious, that off the liberal
arts and sciences should be huddled into one degree of Masonry,
and that the second. With proper economy they might
have been distributed among the 33 or 53 degrees of the
order, and have served a valuable purpose as pretensions ;
but, crowded together where they are, they choke our credulity
with their prodigious bulk, and leave the superior degrees
destitute of thq semblance of an art or science to
support life and character. This shows that the higher degrees
are illegitimate children, having a shelter under the
paternal roof, but not a cent of the inheritance.
And now, reader, we have travelled through the lodges,
with a short flight to the sublime degrees, carefully inspecting
the pretensions of Free Masonry, and exposing her vanity
and emptiness.
And where is the knowledge given, the desire of which
the candidate for Masonry is made to say, prompts him to
seek admission to the lodge ?—(Book of Cons, of Mass.
p. 4.)
44 Masonry is a progressive science." (Preston, Webb's
Monitor, chap. 10. F. M. Library, p. 165, &c.