he Committee of Correspondence of New York, in 1851, announced the
doctrine, that a Chapter, or virtual Past Master, cannot legally install
the Master of a Symbolic Lodge; but that there is no rule forbidding his
being present at the ceremony. This doctrine has been accepted by several
Grand Lodges, while others again refuse to admit the presence of a virtual
Past Master at the installation-service.

In South Carolina, for instance, by uninterrupted usage, virtual Past
Masters are excluded from the ceremony of installation.

In Louisiana, under the high authority of the late Brother Gedge, it is
asserted, that "it is the bounden duty of all Grand Lodges to prevent the
possessors of the (chapter) degree from the exercise of any function
appertaining to the office and attributes of an installed Master of a
lodge of Symbolic Masonry, and refuse to recognize them as belonging to
the order of Past Masters."[88]

Brother Albert Pike, whose opinion on masonic jurisprudence is entitled to
the most respectful consideration, has announced a similar doctrine in one
of his elaborate reports to the Grand Chapter of 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_"[89]
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."[90]

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 ori