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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924015555026 
 
REPORT OF 
 COMMITTEE ON DECEASED BRETHREN 
 
 PRESENTED AT THE 
 
 ANNUAL COMMUNICATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 #ranb ILobge of Jfree anb ^ccepteb ilasions; 
 of tte ^tate of i^eto |9ork 
 
 MAY 5, 1909 
 
 BY ,.-1111 
 
 R.-. W.-. GEORGE R. VANDE^yATER 
 
 CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEE ON 
 DECEASED BRETHREN \ 
 
Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. 
 425-435 East Twenty-fourth Street, New York 
 
EEPOET OF THE COMMITTEE ON DECEASED 
 BEETHEEN. 
 
 To the Orand Lodge: 
 
 Our Grand Master in his Annual Address has appropriately referred 
 to the eminent brethren of this and other Grand Jurisdictions who have 
 died since our last Annual Communication. Following a commendable 
 custom, this portion of his address has been referred to a standing eom- 
 mittee on deceased brethren for consideration and report. To tlie thought- 
 less this arrangement might seem to involve a needless repetition and an 
 unjustifiable sacrifice of time and attention to one subject of the many 
 that are proposed for thought and action to this important meeting. But 
 not so will it appear to the thoughtful. There need not be any repeti- 
 tion, and there will not be any waste of our time, if seriously we hesi- 
 tate for a few moments and transfer our thoughts from the pressing 
 demands of the living to the estate and concerns of the dead. 
 
 This report is not an obituary or a cluster of memorials. It is rather 
 a thoughtful dissertation on death and immortality, suggested by the 
 passing out of this life of many whom hitherto we loved, and love not 
 less now, though we are conscious that they are lost awhile. 
 
 Masonry is a very ancient traditional teaching that tallies very closely 
 with what is proposed by revelation. Masonry teaches a great many 
 truths, but not one of greater importance or with greater emphasis than 
 this, that death is not at all what it seems to be — the end, but rather the 
 beginning of an existence that has no end. 
 
 Death, as a doctrine of Masonry, is much more of a birth than any- 
 thing else. It is entrance far more than exit, and your friend when he 
 dies, or they say he dies, has not vanished, but only 
 
 " Turned a corner, still 
 He pushes on with right good will." 
 . . . " He is not dead, this friend, not dead, 
 But in the path we mortals tread, 
 Got some few, trifling steps ahead. 
 
 And nearer to the end. 
 So that you, too, once past the bend. 
 Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend 
 
 You fancy dead." 
 
It will do us no harm to turn from more thrilling things and for a 
 few moments give ourselves to sober, serious thoughts that may make 
 reasonable this fundamental teaching of Freemasonry, that the soul 
 of man shall never, never, never die. 
 
 Nor is your Committee without hope that what here Is presented for 
 meditation, may, on appropriate occasion, be proposed to the individual 
 Lodges of this jurisdiction for the profit of its members. For much as 
 it may minister to organic pride always, and at every communication 
 to have work to do, Masonry calls upon its members to reflect, and to 
 improve themselves in its mystical knowledge. Work and recreation are 
 insufficient engagements to fulfil the purpose of Masonry. Study and 
 reflection are engagements fully as important. The Lodges that train 
 their members to think, that give opportunity for thought, do more for 
 their members than those that do nothing, when they meet, but engage 
 in the work. The most serious-minded Masons of this jurisdiction 
 are beginning seriously to consider if it would not be better for the 
 Craft were there less Masons, and more intelligent ones, than so many 
 in name, who are unable to give reason for the faith they profess. 
 What more pitiable spectacle of a wandering and wondering ignoramus 
 can you imagine than one who has been initiated an entered apprentice, 
 passed to the degree of a fellow-craft and raised to the sublime degree 
 of a Master Mason, who still wonders if there be a God, is half inclined 
 to think that prayer is useless, and has about concluded that death 
 ends all? 
 
 It is to strengthen our convictions, fortify our faith, add assurance 
 to our belief that your Committee asks now your thoughtful attention 
 to the following considerations : 
 
 Death is the ministry of life. It is in no way whatever its cessation. 
 
 " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and die, it abideth 
 alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." 
 
 The natural view of death as the King of Terrors is all wrong. The 
 natural appearance of this world would indicate that it is flat. The 
 natural phenomenon of sunrise would make us think that the sun moves 
 around the earth, yet the very opposite of this is true. 
 
 Things are not always what they seem. The natural view of death 
 is not the right view. 
 
 There are things, and customs, and thoughts that confirm us in this 
 natural and erroneous view of death. For example, we are aware that 
 the severest penalty of the law upon our statute books is death. It is 
 inflicted only for grossest crimes. We have invested death with every 
 emblem of gloom and sorrow, agony and horror, and Masonry has erred 
 in this direction as seriously as has either synagogue or church. It is 
 time our forms of service, and our customs at funerals, changed, and 
 
took on more the note of confidence and hope. Now, only smallest chil- 
 dren, unaffected by wrong notions of death, are unafraid of it. Men 
 generally shrink from it as from the direst calamity. 
 
 One familiar poet voices the sentiment of all when he writes : 
 
 " The tear, the knell, the groan, the pall, the bier. 
 And all we know, or dream, of fear, of agony, are thine. 
 In any form, O Death, thou art terrible." 
 
 All this, and such as this, however cherished, and one may well won- 
 der why, is mere poetic fiction, and neither philosophic reason. Masonic 
 teaching, nor religious revelation. 
 
 That death involves bereavement needs no comment. That bereave- 
 ment necessitates suffering and sorrow is a universal conviction. That 
 the suffering and sorrow, however intense, are not irremediable, is also 
 true, and proof in itself that whatever is its cause it has no permanent 
 value. 
 
 Death is a temporary thing, not, as it seems, a permanent catastrophe. 
 It is not symbolized by the exclamation point, a sign of wonder, nor by 
 the interrogation point, a suggestion of ignorance, nor least of all by 
 the period, the token of complete cessation, full stop so to speak, but 
 rather by the little comma, which suggests a stop for a second, then 
 another breath, and go on. 
 
 Such, really, is death, as nature teaches, reason really confirms. Ma- 
 sonry certifies, and religion attests, the Christian religion attesting most 
 of all. 
 
 Nothing is permitted to exist in this world that does not subserve 
 some use. Decay and death are not exceptions to this seemingly universal 
 law. Pain, however shunned, is at least corrective. Sorrow is often a 
 warning, and not infrequently a balm. The philosopher is more admir- 
 able than the clown, and a psalm singer will outlast a mere minstrel. 
 
 Life is not necessarily sad because it is serious. Nobody gets a 
 proper estimate of existence who persists in regarding it as a perpetual 
 playground. Misery and remorse are often the trumpet calls to the soul 
 to shun the evils which produced them. Men and nations frequently 
 profit the most by the experiences they like the least. Loss and suffer- 
 ing, however great, however terrible, may not be so terrible after all as 
 the trouble they prevent. 
 
 Use is the cause and the effect of everything that exists. When the 
 use of anything is completed it dies. 
 
 Nature is a universal teacher, full of examples of this universal truth. 
 A thing that has no use dies. Masonry would have ceased to exist long 
 ago had it not had great use in this world. Masons who are of no use 
 
to Masonry are dead, while they live, and of use or not, when their 
 bodies have no further use, these die. 
 
 This is all that there is of deq.th, it is merely the end of use in the 
 thing that dies. 
 
 The Old Testament poet compares man's body to a leaf, and uni- 
 versalizes with this expression, " All fade like it." 
 
 Similarly, the sweet singer of Israel compares earthly existence to 
 that of the flower of the field. 
 
 " In the morning it is green and groweth up, but in the evening it is 
 cut down, drieth up, and withereth." 
 
 " All flesh is grass." 
 
 What do such figures teach us? That death ends all? Nothing of 
 the kind ; the very opposite rather of this. 
 
 When the leaf has performed its use, or the flower has found its 
 fruition, it fades, falls to the ground, dies — but what then? In its decay 
 it has done more than it could do in its vitality. Its death becomes 
 the ministry to a fuller existence. The corn and the wheat would never 
 come to maturity, nor would the ripened grain ever be found for man's 
 sustenance were the husk and the chaff always to remain green. It is 
 the Divine order, evidently, that a seed should perpetuate its life by the 
 process of death. Death is but a form of service. 
 
 " Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abidetb 
 alone ; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." Isolation is impos- 
 sible to life that is real. There must be service and altruism wherever 
 there is reproduction and enlargement and continuance of life. 
 
 It is that as dying, behold, we live. 
 
 Stricken to the ground, and sunk into it, death hath no permanent 
 dominion over souls that are immortal. 
 
 " Thy brother shall live again." 
 
 A Mason in the presence of the dead must say in his heart, " All hail, 
 my brother ! " while passing a corpse, and depositing the acacia as the 
 symbol of his faith he expresses only human lament with his lips that 
 proclaim " Alas, my brother ! " 
 
 Death is nothing but a necessity to the full development and perfec- 
 tion of man's essential, continuous and everlasting being. 
 
 Masonic teaching dispels all fear of death. The most senseless thing 
 one can do, if he is trying to do right, is to be afraid to die. 
 
 What myriads have done, we can do, and do without flinching. Ma- 
 sons could not do a better thing for the world than do their utmost to 
 make this teaching better known, and more generally accepted. 
 
 Dying is much easier than living and a great deal better, since dying 
 is but a process of becoming greater. 
 
 It is like a blind man opening his eyes for the first time to the 
 
beauties of the natural world, or as one born deaf listening for the first 
 time to the sweet strains of some sublime symphony, or as one born dumb 
 enabled to speak his thoughts intelligently, or as one long-time a lover 
 given an opportunity to express his affections to another all ready to 
 receive such expression, and wholly responsive. It is more than this, 
 much more, since " eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath 
 it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath 
 prepared for them that love Him." 
 
 So, then, let Masonry teach this truth, and let Masons believe it, that 
 life finds in death its full fruition. 
 
 Death is like an angel whose presence may momentarily affright us, 
 though it need not do this, since it is a gentle miuistrant of mercy, sent 
 to unbind the fetters of clay, to lead us then along the Via sacra until 
 we see the angelic hands drawing aside the Veil of the Temple and look- 
 ing directly into the Sanctum Sanctorum we behold the Divine presence, 
 and looking about us we find old friends and new ones, and are in a 
 ■companionship for ever after, where every word spoken is truth, every 
 thought sincere and pure, every deed an act of kindness, every experience 
 blissful, the entire firmament cloudless, and heaven our endless home. 
 
 If in this life only we have hope, we are miserable. Masonry makes 
 us happy here, because useful here, and assures us of heaven hereafter, 
 since death but transports us to the blessed abode, where we shall be 
 more useful there. 
 
 Do let us take better, truer views of death. We do not like it only 
 because we do not understand it. What we try to teach others by the 
 perpetuation of our rites and mysteries do let us believe more heartily 
 ■ourselves. 
 
 For our comfort, if not for our honor, let us do this. Masons are 
 not pagans. In all ages Masons have been taught to believe as much in 
 •God, and in God's loving care, at and after death as at and after birth. 
 
 Look at death in this light, which we venture to remind you is true 
 Masonic light. 
 
 The angel of life, which we mistakenly call the angel of death, comes 
 ^straight from God to a little infant, innocent and pure, who has served 
 ;some purpose by merely being born, and stopping here never so brief a 
 time, and with more than its mother's tenderness and love unfolds the 
 swaddling clothes of flesh and removes the soul beyond all accidental 
 disease and pain, away. from all danger of temptation and sin, and 
 •clothes it anew with the beautiful raiment in white, and commits it to 
 the care of those who know how to touch the secret springs of its nature 
 -with exquisite skill, and develop talents to the measure of their fulness. 
 It may even be that many excellent women, deprived of motherhood here, 
 •will find vocation of such sort there. 
 
So let us think of our children, whose angels do always behold the 
 face of the Father in heaven, and many of you, my brethren, have chil- 
 dren there. 
 
 So, too, comes death, or rather this angel of life, to the boy and girl, 
 much wanted here, maybe more needed there, removing them from the 
 school of earth, from hard lessons and imperfect tuition, from snares, 
 illusions, distorted visions and strange ideas, and places them in heaven — 
 any other world anywhere, maybe one of the planets, not location but 
 condition constitutes heaven — and there these are taught truth with no 
 admixture of error, and children graduate without effort or struggle. 
 
 And such. Worshipful Brethren, are some of yours, and " of such is 
 the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 And, further to pursue our illustration, a figure of fact remember, if 
 we are spared, and left here until veteran-scarred and aged, then some- 
 thing like this happens, as something like this has happened to our 
 brethren who have left us this last year, and something similar to this 
 will happen to us ere long, when having travelled a long journey, from 
 the far East of life's morning, we grow weary and are tired. In our 
 wanderings we have not always walked as we would, were we to walk 
 again. We have made mistakes. We have succumbed to temptations. 
 We have borne burdens. We have suffered. It may be, were men to see 
 our hearts instead of our faces, they would find more furrows there than 
 show elsewhere. Hands once strong are growing tremulous and weak. 
 Sounds seem distant. Memory is less retentive. Second sight and child- 
 hood people call these symptoms, and the names tell the story. 
 
 Friends of earlier years have gone. New ones are not so interesting. 
 To live forever here would be a fate far worse than that of " the .Wan- 
 dering Jew," a condition inferior to that of " a man without a country."^ 
 Never to be freed from the imprisonment of clay would be a bondage 
 more grievous than the Egyptian. 
 
 There is no fountain of perpetual youth save that of death. When 
 children advance to it, and the aged revert to it, then perpetual youth 
 is an attainment. That will be heaven. 
 
 Cherishing such thoughts of death, what it is and what it does, we 
 bless God for the good examples of those who have left us, are glad to 
 forget any wrong they may have done, are silent concerning shortcom- 
 ings, outspoken in praise of known virtues, and pray that during the 
 period of waiting they and we may be kept in the enfolding embrace of 
 Grod, who hatest nothing that He has made, who forgivest the sins of 
 those who are penitent, and who will save to the uttermost the children 
 of His own creation. 
 
 Our roll of the dead reveals the constituency of your Masonic Fra- 
 ternity. They number the mighty and the lowly, the well known and 
 
the less known, the world-revered and honored, and those whose virtues 
 were exhibited to but few, those exalted in station and lowly in rank, 
 the ecclesiastic, the statesman, the cleric, the layman, the legislator, the 
 financier, the scholar and the man of commerce and of trade, all of them 
 our beloved brethren, some better than others, all of them, let us believe, 
 trying to be good and to do right, now happily where they are able to 
 be sons of God, measuring up to the stature of the fulness of Masonic 
 integrity and genuine manhood. 
 
 Tour Committee recommends that a page be set apart in our pub- 
 lished Proceedings for each name mentioned in the Grand Secretary's 
 " Roll Call of the Dead." 
 
 And what shall we more say? 
 
 " They cannot be where God is not, 
 On any sea or shore. 
 Whatever betides, God's love abides. 
 Abides for evermore." 
 
 Masons of all men ought to have learned how to grow old gracefully, 
 live contentedly and die happily. 
 
 Some of us are so thankful that they have learned the secret. It is 
 truly the " Arcana Celestia." And here are its fruits, by which ye shall 
 know them that have learned it : 
 
 " A little more tired at close of day, 
 A little less anxious to have our way ; 
 A little less ready to scold and blame. 
 A little more care for a brother's name. 
 As we are nearing the journey's end, 
 Where time and eternity meet and blend. 
 
 " A little more love for the friends of youth. 
 A little less zeal for established truth. 
 A little more charity in our views. 
 A little less thirst for daily news. 
 As we silently fold our tents away. 
 And thoughtfully watch at close of day. 
 
 " A little less care for bonds and gold, 
 A thought of true treasure of value untold, 
 A broader view and a saner mind ; 
 A little more love for all mankind. 
 As we go faring down the way 
 That leads to the dawn of a better day. 
 
" A little more leisure to sit and dream, 
 A little more real are things unseen ; 
 We're a little nearer to those ahead. 
 We have visions of those long loved and dead, 
 As we knovsf we're going where all must go. 
 To the place the living may never know. 
 
 " A little more laughter, a few more tears, 
 And we shall have numbered our fleeting years ; 
 ' Then the record is closed and prayers are said,' 
 And we are part of the countless dead. 
 Thrice happy we'll be if some one can say, 
 I live, because he has passed my way." 
 
 " So teach us, Lord, to number our days, that we may apply our 
 hearts unto wisdom ! " 
 
 Fraternally submitted, 
 
 GBOEGB R. VAN DE WATER, 
 
 Chairman. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HS 537.N7A4 1909a 
 
 Report of Committee on Deceased Brethren 
 
 3 1924 015 555 026