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To the question why a Craft mason
should Join the Royal Arch, there have been different
answers. One is that the Membership of a Royal Arch
Chapter is the consummation of a Craft mason's Masonic
career, while the other is that by so doing he is satisfied
with his desire to jin a distinct Order. And there is
no denying the fact that there is some connection between
the Craft and the Royal Arch Degree.
To establish this connection, it is
necessary to have a retrospect of the First Three Degrees.
In the First Degree the Entered Apprentice begins with
his Masonic career as an ordinary natural wordly man,
i.e., the candidate is taught first to pufiy and subdue
his sensual nature, to resist temptation, etc. and then
to develop his mental and spiritual nature, i.e. to
contemplate his intellectual faculties, so that the
secrets of nature and the principles of intellectual
truth are unveiled to his view. His mind thus purified
by virtue and science, he is taught how to die and where
he becomes a regenerated perfected man. He is regenerated,
because by the utter surrendering of his old life nad
losing his Soul to save it, he rises from the dead,
a Master, a just man, made perfect with larger consciousness
and faculties - an efficient instrument for use by the
Great Architect in his plan of rebuilding the Temple
of fallen humanity.
The Royal Arch, however, carried the
process stage further by showing its fulfillment in
the Exaltation or Apotheosis of him who has undergone
it, i.e., his delfication or attribute of divine powers.
Thus In the Craft degree, the candidate
after a rigorous discipline where he subdues his sensual
nature, proceeds to study the laws of nature, aims to
become a perfected man, and then finally dies. He is
buried and rises again. Thus the Master Mason is raised
from a figurative death to a reunion with the former
companions of his tolls, implying the reintegration
and resumption of all his old faculties and powers in
a sublimated state.
The Roya Arch Degree exhibits and exalts
the candidates to a still higher Order of Life. Thus
the Royal Arch Degree is an extension and completion
of the Third Degree of which at one time it formed a
part. This separation was made more for convenience
sake than for anything else, as the two parts in combination
made an inconveniently long ritual. Moreover, It needed
a change in the Fraft paraphernalia as well of the Officers.
Thus the degrees in Craft Masonry and the Royal Arch
Degree form a progressive group, offering us a phillosophy
of the spiritual life of man and diagram of the process
of regeneration. It proclaims the fact that there exists
a higher and more sacred path of life than that which
was normally treat.
In the Royal Arch Degree we are told
that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who destroyed
Jerusalem and set fire to the Temple, carried away most
of the inhabitants to Babylon, 416 years after the Temple
was dedicated to Jehovah by King Solomon. The tribes
of Judah and Benjamin, however, remained in captivity.
King Cyrus of Parsia taking pity on the calamities of
the Jews issued an edict permitting them to return to
Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple of the Lord, which
they did. The Babyloplan bondage - allegorically speaking
- is the bondage of the human soul. The edict of King
Cyrus is the inward urge to build upon the ruins of
man's natural self a nobler and worthier one.
In one of the books on Free masonry,
I recollect having read that if a Craft mason is not
able to join the other degrees like the Mark or the
Ark Mariner, etc., he should at least Join the Royal
Arch. The underlying idea is that we should inculate
the moral principles embodied in the three Degrees,
and attain perfection and divination aimed at in the
Royal Arch Degree.
The Royal Arch is considered a Supreme
Degree, because it moves on a supremely high level through
a long strenuous period of purification and mental discipline,
- the climax of which reaches in the final merging of
the Being In the Deity itself.
Companions, we are all human beings
and are well aware that to attain such a perfection
is not an easy task. Hardly a few in the world have
got the will and the strength to do so. This, however,
does not mean that we should consider ourselves helpless
and make no efforts towards goodness in however small
and humble a way to the best of our capacity - as no
goodness small will be without its reward.
If this desire towards goodness were
to pervade through every soul in however small a degree,
the misery, the strife, the hatred which we now see
throughout the world would be mitigated at least to
some extent. Let us pray to the True and Loving God
Most High that he give us the will and the strength
to attain this Aim.
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