Quality and Equality

Masonic Education – Quality and Equality

In a society, is a quality, more practiced than in the order of Freemasonry, for we are all Brethren, and it is said that amongst Brethren there must be the most perfect quality. But this word may be misunderstood.

We are not all equal in the Lodge, inasmuch as some are appointed or elected to rule and govern, so it is the duty of others carefully and promptly to obey, and all are equally to be elected to those Offices, having first duly performed their duties as private members, and thus enabled to fill them with credit to ourselves and satisfaction to the craft.

We are not all equal by creation with respect to our mental faculties, and more especially, we are not all equal in the labor which we have, or ought to have, bestowed upon cultivating those mental faculties to the utmost possible extent.

But we ought all of us to be equally zealous in the discharge of our duties as men and Masons, and should all proof ourselves to be perfectly equal in the seal of our fraternal affection to each other. To be equal to each other in Brotherly Love, is the principal thing which ought to be understood in our equality.

We dare not for one moment lose sight of the rank or station which each individual Brother fills in society, yet there may be at the same time a perfect equality among men of the most social ranks in the desire to promote every useful work. And this equality will produce the most beneficial effect on the human heart.

Any Mason who would dare to attempt, among the Brethren, to claim that precedents which is conventional position in society may give him, would disgrace the philosophy of the order, and by so doing lay a sacrilegious hand upon that sacred bond by which we are indissolubly united to each other.