Then we have a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of a soul and the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoralized by lucre. The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. As the Ancients did, Masonry styles Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice, the four cardinal virtues. This chapter introduces a score of major modern Christian thinkers whose views on law, politics, and human nature deserve closer study by jurists and theologians alike.

An upgraded official reprint was released in 2011, with annotations by Arturo de Hoyos, the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction's Grand Archivist and Grand Historian. The tyrant's plea, necessity, is always available; and the tyrant once in power, the necessity of providing for his safety makes him savage. First published from 1872 to 1969, "Morals and Dogma" is one of the most insightful works ever prepared for Freemasonry. I've heard that the book doesn't hold a good reputation even among masons, and I'd like to hear from you why.Regardless the spine seems very thin for the mass of the book and it will absolutely tapper in you read it cover to cover. Written as a companion to the rituals of the Scottish Rite Masonry popular in America in the nineteenth century, Morals and Dogma has as its central subject matter the ancient myths and related rites of the classical Mediterranean world and eastward.

It must suffice to say, that it is the Creative Energy of the Deity, is represented as a point, and that point in the centre of the Circle of immensity. The former, therefore, is an emblem of what concerns the earth and the body; the latter of what concerns the heavens and the soul. There is, we are told, a determined though unseen bravery, which defends itself, foot to foot, in the darkness, against the fatal invasion of necessity and of baseness. The ancients counted seven planets, thus arranged: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.A miasma exhales from these crouching consciences that reflect the master; the public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapsed, consciences shrunken, souls puny.

Know ye not, says the Apostle Paul, that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?The people that would be Free and Independent, must possess Sagacity, Forethought, Foresight, and careful Circumspection, all which are included in the meaning of the word Prudence.