The Fellow Craft Degree stands sharply contrasted to the Entered Apprentice and Master Mason Degrees. In the First Degree the candidate is moved by the sense of novelty, for it is his first experience in Freemasonry, an experience, moreover, that is full of rapid action; the Third Degree he has long heard about, he knows it will bring his initiation to its climax in a drama of peculiarly moving power,' also it marks the end of his journey and empowers him to consummate his membership. Set between the two, the Second Degree seems to suffer by comparison. It does not grip the emotions like the Third, nor does it stir with the freshness and novelty of the First,' it is likely to become a mere half-way station, a necessary but somewhat dull bridge from an exciting point of departure to a thrilling destination.

Much in the Degree itself appears to bear out this impression. One portion of it carries the candidate back to certain unexciting happenings of four thousand years ago; another has for its background the uninspiring school curriculum of the early Middle Ages; a third, its most prominent feature, sounds like a dry, academic lecture delivered by an eighteenth-century school master of rationalistic leanings. Since it gives this impression it is not surprising to discover that .fewer Lodge members attend conferrals of it than of the First, far fewer than of the Third,' or that some Lodges themselves tend to confer it in a careless manner with a shabby and inadequate equipment.

The words "appear," "seem," etc., in the preceding paragraphs were used advisedly, because we shall herein not agree with the characterization of the Fellow Craft Degree as there sketched. As regards its intrinsic value, its dignity, its place in the whole system of the Craft, it stands on a level with the other two. Certainly it is not a half-way station or a bridge, a necessary device to get a candidate advanced from one Degree to another. And certainly there is nothing dull or dry about it when it is properly understood,' indeed, there is a sense in which it stands above anything else in Masonry, both in value and in appeal. And again, it assuredly is not something to be passed through once and then forgotten, because--as is also the case with the First Degree--its obligation in certain important respects remains binding forever, and its teachings are as necessary and as integral a part of Freemasonry as those of the Third, and remain always in force in the mind of a Mason.

To show that these statements are true is one of the principal aims of this booklet. Another of its principal aims will be to serve as an introduction of the Degree to the candidate, to furnish him with such hints and suggestions as will enable him to secure its riches for himself. Hints and suggestions are all that can be given in print, especially in a limited space - but a hint of it, if properly given and followed to the end, may lead one far. Similar booklets have been published on the Entered Apprentice and Master Mason Degrees; the candidate who may chance to read the present booklet is recommended to read the others. He will find in them much that bears on the Fellow Craft Degree not here given in order to avoid repetition.
 

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