We are told that Freemasonry is a progressive science and thus in the Second Degree we progress from the principles of moral truth and virtue and are permitted to extend our researches into the hidden mysteries of nature and science. Not that we should abandon moral truth and virtue. Far from it! Progress implies using what we have learnt but increasing the uses to which it is put.
     The newly initiated apprentice first of all has to learn the ‘language’ of Freemasonry before he can use that language and to know what it means. So what are these ‘hidden mysteries’; from whom are they hidden and why? Let us start by extending our own researches into the full meaning of the words that we use. Over the centuries the exact interpretation of the words has altered, some slightly and some more noticeably. Take the word let for instance: it can mean allow, permit, but it also still has an earlier meaning of hinder, get in the way of. The use of this meaning is found in the phrase without let or hindrance. Then, at tennis you will hear the umpire shout Let! when the server’s ball hits the top of the net but goes on to bounce on the ground inside the white line. You may well think the umpire was saying Let in the sense of ‘Allow the server another try.’ He wasn’t. He was saying, ‘The ball has been let or hindered by the net-cord, so we won’t count that.’
     Another word which has changed its meaning down the ages is prevent. Nowadays we normally use this word in the sense of stop something happening or get in the way of, but originally it meant to go before, to direct or guide. A choirboy, finding little excitement in a long sermon, will leaf his way through the Book of Common Prayer and find something odd or amusing as, for instance, a prayer that begins, ‘Prevent us, O Lord in all our doings with thy most gracious favour...’ That same boy, looking through the Calendar which is printed at the beginning of that 1662 Prayer Book would be even more intrigued to find that every year on the third of May we are expected to commemorate ‘The invention of the Cross.’ At first sight this seems to be almost blasphemous, for why should such a horrible invention be commemorated at all?
     This brings us back to our previous example of changed meanings and notice that they both include ‘vent’ as the second syllable, prevent, invent, from the Latin Venire, Ventum, ‘to move forward.’ Thus Pre-vent indicates ‘to go before or guide’ and In-vent ‘to come upon or discover.’ The Prayer Book Calendar is not, therefore, remembering thankfully the person who first thought of making a cross. No, it reminds us that May 3rd was reputed to be the day when Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, digging in the ruins on Mount Calvary, came upon or invented what she believed to be the actual cross on which Jesus of Nazareth had been put to death three hundred years before. We no longer treat it as a particularly important day but it still stays in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer.
     What is all this leading up to? We have seen that to ‘extend our researches’ is another way of saying ‘become inventors’ in the proper sense of that word: to seek, to dig if necessary, to find that which is hidden. God, the Creator of all things in heaven and earth, gave to mankind certain easily interpreted signs such as sunshine, rain and wind and mankind has used these for his own purposes from time immemorial. Other things in nature, such as the power of steam and in science, such as the power of petrol, mankind has only discovered either accidentally or as a result of extended researches down the ages.
     It was not mankind who thought all this out and created it. Creation is something that can only be done by the Great Architect of the Universe; we have only ‘come upon or invented’ what was already there. Millions of apples had fallen from trees before Newton’s day and millions of kettles had boiled before Stephenson. The forces of gravity and internal combustion have actually been in existence from the beginning of the world. It would have been technically possible to make a television camera in the days of Julius Caesar; all the ingredients were there, somewhere on this planet, but nobody had as yet extended their researches far enough to know how to put all the bits together and make them work.
     So, some mysteries have been solved and some remain hidden and I commend to you the persistence of that choirboy who was determined to extend his researches. How do I know so much about that choirboy? I see his face every time I look in a mirror!