and teaching Americans to reinforce “the duties of men and
Citizens.” As Washington noted to his brothers only a few
months later, America needed to become what Masonry already
was: “a lodge for the virtues.”
Principles to guide a country
Non-Masons have often speculated whether the motto of the
United States of America, found on the Great Seal – “Novus
Ordo Seclorum” – has any Masonic significance. It has – but
one that few Masonic authors have noticed.
Anti-Masons are fond of suggesting that this phrase means
that Freemasonry is a secret conspiracy to create a world government under its control, and that the United States of America
was the first step in this process. That is nonsense. But it is quite
accurate to say that Freemasons were hoping that the United
States of America would become a “new order of the ages,” a
republic that would not “degenerate into either despotism or
anarchy,” as Bullock noted.
Only a few months after leaving the office of president of
the United States, Bro. George Washington responded to a
request from the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania for his views
on Freemasonry and the new American republic. It was from
his reply that Steven Bullock has quoted an excerpt, above.
However, President Washington’s full remarks on this occasion
are worth noting:
Fellow Citizens and Brothers of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania:
I have received your address with all the feelings of brotherly
affection, mingled with those sentiments for the society which
it was calculated to excite. To have been in any degree an
instrument in the hands of Providence to promote order and
union, and erect, upon solid foundation, the true principles of
government, is only to have shared with many others in a labour,
the result of which, let us hope, will prove through all ages, a
Sanctuary for Brothers and a Lodge for the Virtues.
Our first president is not here expressing a hope that Freemasons will govern the
new republic; far from it. What he is expressing is the hope that the principles that
guide Freemasonry will undergird the new
country in such a manner that America will
become a place where brotherhood is the
hallmark of citizenship, and where virtues
will find a home.
The United States of America – the
world’s first large-scale democratic republic – has survived to become the paradigm
of freedom because these Masonic lessons
became a part of the fabric of the new
American republic. This is the true Masonic
“secret” that we passed on to the United
States of America at its founding. And so
it has been for more than 200 years. The
American republic was truly a “New Order
of the Ages.”
