Masonic Life Network

Sprig of Acacia,”
For at least two hundred years and probably much longer the sprig of acacia has held Freemasonry’s premier teaching. The grave is not the end. Bodies die and decay, but something “which bears the nearest affinity to that which pervades all nature and which never, never, dies,” rises from the grave to become one of that vast throng which has preceded us. Error can slay, as can evil and selfish greed, but not permanently. That which is true and fair and fine cannot be destroyed. Its body may be murdered, its disappearance may be effected, the rubbish of the Temple and a temporary grave may conceal it for a time, but where is interred that which is mortal, there grows an evergreen or ever living sprig of acacia — acacia none the less that it may be a spiritual sprig, a plant not of the earth. For never a man has seen the spirit of one who has gone, or visioned the land where no
shadows are. If we see it in our dreams, we see by faith, not eyes. But we can see the acacia — we can look back through the dragging years to the legend of Osiris and think that even as the acacia grew about his body to protect it until Isis might find it, so does the acacia of Freemasonry bloom above the casket from which, in the solemn words of Ecclesiastes “the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
[Carl H. Claudy, “Sprig of Acacia,” Short Talk Bulletin Vol. X No. 11 – November 1932]