What, I wonder, is your immediate reaction when you see the item on the lodge summons: ‘A lecture will be delivered’?
     Do you make up your mind then and there that you will not be going to lodge that night because there is no ceremony? Or is it the name of the speaker that puts you off because you did hear him once before and were not impressed? Or is it perhaps the subject of the talk that doesn’t interest you?
     Whatever the reason for our absence when a lecture is arranged it is quite clear by now that several people do stay away when this is the main item of lodge business. There may even be those masons who think that having a lecture is not really part of what Freemasonry is all about. If that is what we think then knowing what Free and Accepted masonry was like for its first two centuries – and I mean from 1570 to 1770 – may be a surprise.
     When a new Candidate was then admitted into the lodge he would find the people present sitting round a table in the middle of the room.
     He was escorted round this table where the members were gathered and was passed through the ‘gates’ of the two wardens.
     He was then presented to a worshipful Master who invited him to pass to the east over a chalk or charcoal design on the floor.
     There he would kneel down, put his hands on a sacred book and repeat his obligation. He was then raised to his feet and at the Master’s request a warden clothed him with his apron. So far this must all seem very familiar to a Freemason today.
     Then, however, there was a difference. The new mason was invited to sit at the table amongst the members and the Master would begin to ask the lodge members a list of questions to which they were expected to give the prepared answers.
     The questions began by finding out the people and the events with which Freemasonry began. It also explained why the tools used by the working stonemasons were still used by us and what they meant for us. Indeed, it was because there were these special meanings for the tools and some of the objects in the lodge room – like the two pillars and the three candles – that we describe Freemasonry as ‘illustrated by symbols’.
     This list of questions, however, would steadily grow over the years as more and more information was found and introduced by the members of the lodge.
     The first name for this series of questions and answers was a ‘catechism’ but in time they began to be called ‘a lecture’. As you can now understand, this was an important and normal part of the act of making a mason.
     To this day, in the United States of America, when a Freemason goes through a ceremony, there comes a point when he sits or stands to one side and the Master summons one of the officers and asks him, by question and answer, to explain all that has happened to the candidate.
     Having such a lecture is part and parcel of masonic practice.
     Of course, there is still a little bit of that custom of asking questions about what has happened to the Candidate when our new mason is taken to the wardens for testing. You will realise that he is not being given any reason for why he was slipshod, why he had metal objects removed and why he was hoodwinked. In an odd sense you might say that an English Freemason is still being left in the dark about many things that were important enough to have happened to him. Why and how did this happen?
     In 1813 there was a most important event of which we will soon be celebrating the bicentenary: it was when the two remaining Grand Lodges of the eighteenth century, the Premier Grand Lodge, known as the ‘Moderns’ and the later Grand Lodge of the Old Constitutions, known as the ‘Antients’ were united. That was the birthday of our present United Grand Lodge of England.
     This new Grand Lodge had to agree new forms of ceremony and the new arrangement saw the separation of the ‘lectures’ from the normal ceremonies. Instead, the lectures were meant to be given from time to time so that the Brethren would be fully informed about what went on in the ceremonies. The sad fact is that for many that never happened and the Grand Lodge lectures are in another book that only a few lodges ever use.
     It is because those lectures lie unused that Brethren offer their own ‘lectures’ to explain parts of our Craft that masons do not understand. What is certain is that lectures are, and always have been, part of our heritage.
     Of course, if the lecture to be given is on fly-fishing or great railway engines then you could be excused for staying away. If it’s on the Craft then give it one more try. You might be surprised.