The Masonic Book Club, Vol. 28

In reading the text of The Masonic Ladder, consider its implications. Ask yourself which came first, the Enlightenment or the Masonic Fraternity with its light ever shining forth to reveal the tenets of liberty, equality and fraternity. Is our fraternity the catalyst that led to the substantial changes brought about by the enlightenment or simply a response to it? Several new books have been printed lately on this subject, for it seems that the sentiments of the fraternity seeped into the public mind and changes occurred. Free public education and the separation of church and state are among those ideals, which can first be seen within fraternal writings. Perhaps the foremost book dealing with the fraternity’s influence is one by Margaret C. Jacobs, Professor of History at Harvard College. The book titled Living in the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth Century Europe was published by Oxford University Press in 1991. Its conclusion is that Freemasonry did not advocate the overthrow of governments by force or otherwise, but that the Fraternity did provide the foundation and ideals on which the people acted. This she bases on a study of events and philosophies just prior to and during the 'revolutionary period' which indicates that the first place in which the ideas of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the ideas of the separation of church and state with a free educational system was the Masonic Lodge room! Only in the minute books, literature and recorded materials of the Masonic Fraternity are these sentiments to be found.The ideas presented in this reprint of Sherer’s The Masonic Ladder or the Nine Steps to Ancient Freemasonry form a clear presentation of one man’s interpretation of the rituals of the Masonic Fraternity. It must be understood that such an interpretation is bound and restricted in many ways by the age in which it was produced, and by the limitations of one man’s philosophy and being. Yet, it is believed by the Board of Directors that most will find that the interpretation is one based on the highest Masonic tenets, those of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth, and concordant with the philosophy of the Fatherhood of One God, and the Brotherhood of all men be they members of the Fraternity or not. Read Sherer’s book. In it you will find the basis on which democracy was founded.