Temperance is that due restraint upon our affections and passions which renders the body tame and governable, and frees the mind from the allurements of vice. This virtue should be the constant practice of every Mason; as he is thereby taught to avoid excess, or contracting any licentious or vicious habit, the indulgence of which would subject him to the contempt and detestation of all good Masons; and might lead him to disclose some of those valuable secrets which he has promised to conceal and never reveal. It will remind you of the p. and alludes to the * * *
Justice is that standard, or boundary of right, which enables us to render to every man his just due, without distinction. This virtue is not only consistent with human and Divine laws, but is the very cement and support of civil society. As justice in a great measure constitutes the really good man, so should it be the invariable practice of every Mason never to deviate from the minutest principles thereof; ever remembering the time when placed in * * * which alludes to the * * *
Chalk, Charcoal and Clay.
Entered Apprentices should serve their masters with freedom, fervency and zeal, which are represented by Chalk, Charcoal and Clay.
There is nothing freer than Chalk, the slightest touch of which leaves a trace; there is nothing more fervent than Charcoal, for to it, when properly ignited, the most obdurate metals will yield; there is nothing more zealous than Clay.
Our Mother Earth alone of all the elements has never proved unfriendly to man. Bodies of Water deluge him with rain, oppress him with hail and drown him with inundation; the Air rushes in storms and prepares the tempest; and Fire lights up the volcano; but the Earth, ever kind and indulgent, is found subservient to his wishes. Though constantly harassed, more to furnish the luxuries than the necessaries of life, she never refuses her accustomed yield, spreading his pathway with flowers and his table with plenty. Though she produces poison, still she supplies the antidote, and returns with interest every good committed to her care; and when at last we are called upon to pass through the "dark valley of the shadow of death" she once more receives us, and piously covers our remains within her bosom, thus admonishing us that as from it we came, so to it we must shortly return.
Symbolism of the Degree.
The First, or Entered Apprentice, degree of Masonry is intended, symbolically, to represent the entrance of man into the world in which he is afterwards to become a living and thinking actor. Coming from the ignorance and darkness of the outer world, his first craving is for light—not that physical light which springs from the great orb of day as its fountain, but that moral and intellectual light which emanates from the primal Source of all things—from the Grand Architect of the Universe—the Creator of the sun and of all that it illuminates. Hence the great, the primary object of the first degree is to symbolize the birth of intellectual light in the mind; and the Entered Apprentice is the type of the unregenerate man, groping in moral and mental darkness, and seeking for the light which is to guide his steps and point him to the path which leads to duty and to Him who gives to duty its reward.