The Builders

Written by Joseph Fort Newton
Published in 2008
Hardcover


Originally published in 1916, The Builders was intended to be a brief story and study of Masonry. It hopes to teach "what Masonry is, whence it came, what it has done in the world" and to serve as an example for those wishing to be a Mason, "not merely in name".

From the back cover:

Here are the real foundations of Masonry, both material and moral: in the deep need and aspiration of man, and his creative impulse; in his instinctive Faith, his quest of the Ideal, and his love of the Light. Underneath all his building lay the feeling, prophetic of his last and highest thought, that the earthly house of his life should be in right relation with its heavenly prototype, the world temple —imitating on earth the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

If he erected a square temple, it was an image of the earth; if he built a pyramid, it was a picture of a beauty shown him in the sky; as, later, his cathedral was modeled after the mountain, and its dim and lofty arch a memory of the forest vista—its altar a fireside of the soul, its spire a prayer in stone.

And as he wrought his faith and dream into reality, it was but natural that the tools of the builder should become emblems of the thoughts of the thinker. Not only his tools, but, as we shall see, the very stones with which he worked became sacred symbols—the temple itself a vision of that House of Doctrine, that Home of the Soul, which, though unseen, he is building in the midst of the years.

Joseph Fort Newton