It is one of the most beautiful features of the Masonic Institution, that it teaches not only the necessity, but the nobility, of labor. Among the earliest of the implements in whose emblematic use it instructs its neophytes is the Trestle Board, the acknowledged symbol of the Divine Law, in accordance with whose decree labor was originally instituted as the common lot of all; and therefore the important lesson that is closely connected with this symbol is, that to labor well and truly, to labor honestly and persistently, is the object and the chief end of all humanity.
To work out well the task that is set before us is our highest duty, and
should constitute our greatest happiness. All men, then, must have their
trestle boards; for the principles that guide us in the discharge of our
duty--the schemes that we devise--the plans that we propose--are but the
trestle board, whose designs we follow, for good or for evil, in our labor
of life.
Earth works with every coming spring, and within its prolific bosom
designs the bursting seed, the tender plant, and the finished tree, upon
its trestle board.
Old ocean works forever--restless and murmuring--but still bravely
working; and storms and tempests, the purifiers of stagnant nature, are
inscribed upon its trestle board.
And God himself, the Grand Architect, the Master Builder of the world, has
labored from eternity; and working by his omnipotent will, he inscribes
his plans upon illimitable space, for the universe is his trestle board.
There was a saying of the monks of old which is well worth meditation. They taught that "laborare est orare"--labor is worship. They did not, it is true, always practise the wise precept. They did not always make labor a part of their religion. Like Onuphrius, who lived threescore years and ten in the desert, without human voice or human sympathy to cheer him, because he had not learned that man was made for man, those old ascetics went into the wilderness, and built cells, and occupied themselves in solitary meditation and profitless thought. They prayed much, but they did no work. And thus they passed their lives, giving no pity, aid, or consolation to their fellow-men, adding no mite to the treasury of human knowledge, and leaving the world, when their selfish pilgrimage was finished, without a single contribution, in labor of mind or body, to its welfare.
And men, seeing the uselessness of these ascetic lives, shrink now from their example, and fall back upon that wiser teaching, that he best does God's will who best does God's work. The world now knows that heaven is not served by man's idleness--that the "dolce far niente," though it might suit an Italian lazzaroni, is not fit for a brave Christian man, and that they who would do rightly, and act well their part, must take this distich for their motto:--
"With this hand work, and with the other pray, And God will bless them both from day to day."
Now, this doctrine, that labor is worship, is the very doctrine that has been advanced and maintained, from time immemorial, as a leading dogma of the Order of Freemasonry. There is no other human institution under the sun which has set forth this great principle in such bold relief. We hear constantly of Freemasonry as an institution that inculcates morality, that fosters the social feeling, that teaches brotherly love; and all this is well, because it is true; but we must never forget that from its foundation-stone to its pinnacle, all over its vast temple, is inscribed, in symbols of living light, the great truth that labor is worship.
It has been supposed that, because we speak of Freemasonry as a speculative system, it has nothing to do with the practical. But this is a most grievous error. Freemasonry is, it is true, a speculative science, but it is a speculative science based upon an operative art. All its symbols and allegories refer to this connection. Its very language is borrowed from the art, and it is singularly suggestive that the initiation of a candidate into its mysteries is called, in its peculiar phraseology, work.