Arkansas. He does not consider "that the Past Master's degree, conferred in a chapter, invests the recipient with any rank or authority, except within the chapter itself; that it no ways qualifies or authorizes him to preside in the chair of a lodge: that a lodge has no legal means of knowing that he has received the degree in a chapter: for it is not supposed to know anything that takes place there any more than it knows what takes place in a Lodge of Perfection, or a Chapter of Knights of the Rose Croix;" and, of course, if the Past Masters of a lodge have no such "legal means" of recognition of Chapter Masters, they cannot permit them to be present at an installation.
This is, in fact, no new doctrine. Preston, in his description of the installation ceremony, says: "The new Master is then conducted to an adjacent room, where he is regularly installed, and bound to his trust in ancient form, in the presence of at least three installed Masters"3 And Dr. Oliver, in commenting on this passage, says, "this part of the ceremony can only be orally communicated, nor can any but installed Masters be present."4
And this rule appears to be founded on the principles of reason. There can be no doubt, if we carefully examine the history of Masonry in this country and in England, that the degree of Past Master was originally conferred by Symbolic Lodges as an honorarium or reward bestowed upon those Brethren who had been found worthy to occupy the Oriental Chair. In so far it was only a degree of office, and could be obtained only from the Lodge in which the office had been conferred. At a later period it was deemed an essential prerequisite to exaltation in the degree of Royal Arch, and was, for that purpose, conferred on candidates for that position, while the Royal Arch degree was under the control of the symbolic Lodges, but still only conferred by the Past Masters of the Lodge. But subsequently, when the system of Royal Arch Masonry was greatly enlarged and extended in this country, and chapters were organized independent of the Grand and symbolic Lodges, these Chapters took with them the Past Master's degree, and assumed the right of conferring it on their candidates. Hence arose the anomaly which now exists in American Masonry, of two degrees bearing the same name, and said to be almost identical in character, conferred by two different bodies under entirely different qualifications and for totally different purposes. As was to be expected, when time had in some degree obliterated the details of history, each party began to claim for itself the sovereign virtue of legitimacy. The Past Masters of the Chapters denied the right of the Symbolic Lodges to confer the degree, and the latter, in their turn, asserted that the degree, as conferred in the Chapter, was an innovation.
The prevalence of the former doctrine would, of course, tend to deprive the Symbolic Lodges of a vested right held by them from the most ancient times—that, namely, of conferring an honorarium on their Masters elect.
On the whole, then, from this view of the surreptitious character of the Chapter Degree, and supported by the high authority whom I have cited, as well as by the best usage, I am constrained to believe that the true rule is, to deny the Chapter, or Virtual Past Masters, the right to install, or to be present at the installation of the Master of a Symbolic Lodge. A Past Master may preside over a lodge in the absence of the Master, provided he is invited to do so by the Senior Warden present. The Second General Regulation gave the power of presiding, during the absence of the Master, to the last Past Master present, after the lodge had been congregated by the Senior Warden; but two years afterwards, the rule was repealed, and the power of presiding in such cases was vested in the Senior Warden.