Duncan's Masonic Ritual and Monitor - Rose Croix

MASTER MASON, OR THIRD
DEGREE. 1
THE ceremony of opening and conducting the business of a Lodge of Master Masons is
nearly the same as in the Entered Apprentice and Fellow Crafts' Degrees, already
explained. All the business of a "Blue Lodge" (a Lodge of three Degrees) is done in the
Lodge while opened on this Degree, except that of entering an Apprentice or passing a
Fellow Craft, when the Lodge is lowered from the Masters' Degree for that purpose.
The Third Degree is said to be the height of Ancient Free-masonry, and the most sublime
of all the Degrees in Masonry (Royal Arch not even excepted); and when it is conferred,
the Lodge is generally well filled with the members of the Lodge and visiting brethren.
The traditional account of the death, several burials, and resurrections of one of the craft,
Hiram Abiff, the widow's son, as developed in conferring this Degree, is very interesting.
We read in the Bible, that Hiram Abiff was one of the head workmen employed at the
building of King Solomon's Temple, and other ancient writings inform us that he was an
arbiter between King Solomon and Hiram, king of Tyre; but his tragical death is nowhere
recorded, except in the archives of Freemasonry. Not even the Bible, the writings of
Josephus, nor any other writings, however ancient, of which we have any knowledge,
furnish any information respecting his death. It is very singular, that
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a man so celebrated as Hiram Abiff was, universally acknowledged as the third most
distinguished man then living, and, in many respects, the greatest man in the world,
should pass from off the stage of action, in the presence of King Solomon, three thousand
three hundred grand overseers, and one hundred and fifty thousand workmen, with whom
he had spent a number of years, and with King Solomon, his bosom friend, without any
of his numerous confrères even recording his death, or any thing