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Much in the Degree can be interpreted only in the light of such historical facts as these; on the other hand a candidate should not fall into the error of taking the Degree itself to be a chapter out of history. It is not history but Ritual, and the two things are in their nature as widely sundered as the poles. The same is true of the other two Degrees. There has never been any intention, in the beginning or at any other time, that anything in any part of the Ritual

Should be taken as a record of the past, to be judged or treated as history. This was unfortunately not understood by some Brethren from fifty to a hundred years ago who jumped to the conclusion that, since some of'the materials referred to in the Degrees made use of historical facts in a certain way, therefore the Degrees themselves had been designed to body forth the history of Masonry. The mistake led them into serious difficulties, as for example: the account of the Middle Chamber in Solomon's Temple does not square with the account in the Old Testament; if each account is to be taken as history then one or the other must be untrue.

There is no need to fall into such difficulties. History exists to give us certain needed facts about the past. A Ritual exists to teach certain truths in a certain way. It is not just interested in historical facts as such, just as a dramatist, a novelist, a painter, a poet is not; if it picks up something out of history it is not for the sake of being historical but rather to make use of it as so much plastic material for its own purposes. It is perfectly justified in doing so--just as an imaginative artist is justified--and if in reshaping the material to its own purposes it ignores purely historical fact no difficulty is occasioned. History is the slave of time; ritual is timeless. History must at any cost establish the time and the place; ritual is not interested in time or place. It moves in the region of the spirit where time and place mean nothing. It gives us the truth, not through facts but through imagination.

If, therefore, in the Second Degree (or in the Third) the candidate encounters what sounds like a statement about the past, and if that statement is incredible if taken as history, let not his mind be troubled; it is not intended to be history. Solomon's Temple, for example, as it stands recorded and described in the books of Kings and Chronicles, is one thing; Solomon's Temple as it stands in the Second and Third Degree is quite another. And this is equally true of the history of Masonry itself; the Degrees are not intended to give any such history (never were), and wherever they need to reshape the facts of Masonry history for their own proper purpose, they do not hesitate to do so. If a Mason is seeking the truths and inspirations of the Masonic life, let him go to the Ritual; if he is seeking an accurate record of the past, let him go to the history.

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