In some Lodges, after the charge is delivered, the Master says, “Brethren, form on the square.”  Then all the brethren form a circle, and the Master, followed by every brother [except in using the words], says, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”  At the same moment that the last of these words drops from the Master’s lips, every member stamps with his right foot on the floor, and at the same instant brings his hands together with equal force, and in such perfect unison with each other, that persons situated so as to hear it would suppose it the precursor of some dreadful catastrophe.  This is called “The Shock.”  The members of the Lodge then separate.

The above comprises all the secret forms and ceremonies in a Lodge of Entered Apprentice Masons; but if the candidate would thoroughly understand the whole, he must commit to memory the following “Lecture.”  Very few do this except the officers of the Lodge.  The “Lecture” is nothing more nor less than a recapitulation of the preceding ceremonies and forms by way of question and answer, in order fully to explain the same.  In fact, the ceremonies and forms (masonically called the work) and Lecture are so much the same that he who possesses a knowledge of the Lecture cannot be destitute of a knowledge of what the ceremonies and forms are.  The ceremonies used in opening and closing are the same in all the degrees.

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FIRST SECTION.

Lecture on the first degree of masonry.

Question—­From whence came you as an Entered Apprentice Mason?  Answer—­From the Holy Lodge of St. John at Jerusalem.

Q. What recommendations do you bring?  A. Recommendations from the Worshipful Master, Wardens, and brethren of that Right Worshipful Lodge, who greet you.

Q. What comest thou hither to do?  A. To learn to subdue my passions, and improve myself in the secret arts and mysteries of Ancient Freemasonry.

Q. You are a Mason, then, I presume?  A. I am.

Q. How do you know that you are a Mason?  A. By being often tried, never denied, and willing to be tried again.

Q. How shall I know you to be a Mason?  A. By certain signs, and a token.

Q. What are signs?  A. All right angles, horizontals and perpendiculars.

Q. What is a token?  A. A certain friendly and brotherly grip, whereby one Mason may know another in the dark as well as in the light.

Q. Where were you first prepared to be a Mason?  A. In my heart.

Q. Where secondly?  A. In a room adjacent to the body of a just and lawfully constituted Lodge of such.

Q. How were you prepared?  A. By being divested of all metals, neither naked nor clothed, barefoot nor shod, hoodwinked, with a cable-tow about my neck, in which situation I was conducted to the door of the Lodge.