Most Worshipful Brother
Reverend Cato Ensor Sharp, P.G.M.
United Service Lodge, No. 24
Here is some biographical and other information on Most Worshipful Brother Rev. Cato Ensor Sharp, taken from contemporary sources:
"Sharp, Cato Ensor, 170 Fort St, Holy Orders, VicC
Sharp, Cato Ensor, St. Paul's Rectory, Esquimalt, Clerk in Holy Orders, Esq"
Source: B.C. Voters List 1898
This was an address given by M.W. Brother Sharp to Grand Lodge in June, 1921:
“The Chairman: We have now completed the toast list, but an important part of the programme is before us. We have two addresses to come. We are pleased to have with us one whom, by all the fraternal ties that bind, we claim as one of our very own, and whose presence recalls ties with the past, in the person of one of our Past Grand Masters, Most Worshipful Brother the Rev. C. Ensor Sharp. For the benefit of some who possibly may not know our reverend Brother, I would say that he was initiated, passed and raised in United Service Lodge No. 24. in which Lodge he served as Worshipful Master for three years, and eventually became Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia in 1903. For the past few years he has been living in Eastern Canada, but has returned especially to be with us and help in the celebration of this fiftieth anniversary. He is going to address you on the subject of “Freemasonry as a Living Issue To-day.' It affords me a great deal of pleasure, Brethren, to present Most Worshipful Brother the Reverend C. Ensor Sharp.
Most Worshipful Brother Sharp, on rising, was greeted with a hearty outburst of applause, and all rose and sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” followed by loud cheers and more applause.
M.W. Brother C Ensor Sharp: Brother Chairman, and Brethren of our ancient, honoured and beloved Fraternity. I thank you from my heart for the love and affection you have shown me; and it is because I know most of you so intimately that I presume to use such terms as “love” and “affection.” No Freemason in this Jurisdiction ever received more sympathy, love, kindness and help than I did while I was a resident. I have been away for a long time, and return after eighteen years to sit once more in the Grand Lodge of British Columbia.
As I look out at this gathering of our ancient Craft — nor far short of a thousand — I feel that I want to do something in return for all that I have received from Freemasonry, and I know of nothing better than to try and tell the younger members of the Craft what I have learned from it in a quarter of a century. This is not so easy, for all great things are larger than the words used to describe them; and it seems to me so necessary that the splendid youth of to-day — the day of the young man, so many of whom I see assembled before me — should get a firm grip of these teachings m order that our old and honourable Order grow both well and wisely that I will make the endeavour. The majority of Masons who have studied Masonry feel as I do, and I have no doubt that they feel the same difficulty in expressing it, and so, perforce, when addressing the Brethren, often drop into a lighter vein while preferring more serious thoughts.
Two facts stand out before me to night — two facts that have presented themselves impressively to me while I have listened to the excellent speeches of my predecessors. The first is, that never at any time in the history of Masonry has there been a time when our doors hare been so thronged by candidates for its ancient privileges. I wish I had time to tell those longing for initiation how great a privilege it is that they are seeking to he admitted into. These two facts were mentioned by the present Grand Master, who, after a series of visits to the uttermost parts of British Columbia, knows whereof he speaks. And a reflected shadow of these things came to me as I listened to the statement by Most Worshipful Brother Watson of two other facts— that this is a time of trouble and unrest following the days when civilization had been cast into the melting-pot of greed, blood and murder; that men long for rest and refreshment; that the desire of their inner lives is “Oh, where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?”— and they could find it all where he had often found it himself when he heard the words, “Brethren, assist me to open the Lodge.”
It is an astonishing thing that to-day Freemasonry should be such an enormous power and have such a wonderful attraction. As we look around us to-day and meditate upon the things that attract men we should probably, and fairly correctly, describe them as novelty, the benefits of money, and, in many cases, narrow, crude ideas which breed fanaticism. None of these are the attractions of Freemasonry, for it is not a novelty, but an ancient and time-worn Craft. There are no pecuniary benefits to be derived, for the Masons begins his career poor and penniless, and is reminded that he will go out of the world in the same way that he entered—naked and helpless. There is no narrowness, for men of all ranks and of all schools of thought meet in harmony under its banners. Of the truth of this last statement all who have heard the speeches made in this hall to-night, and in the Temple where the Grand Lodge met this afternoon, are assured, for they heard the Brethren speak in the most broad-minded way, not only of men but of nations, and also of religion.
So Freemasonry is well worthy of our attention and of our sympathy, and we well may ask ourselves: “Why do men feel as they do towards it; why do the young men knock at its doors? What is its strange and powerful attraction?My hair is white, my years will soon be numbered, but I feel its attraction to-day stronger than ever, for with Freemasonry many powerful factors came into my life—factors which will never disgrace my life, but factors without which I may disgrace it—this marvellous and profound influence called Freemasonry.
If we, as Freemasons, are going to help man we must understand its history. Freemasonry recognizes that man is an intimate trinity — a trinity of soul and mind and body — for so God, the Great Architect of the Universe, created him in the image of Himself, We shall not get the inner core of Freemasonry unless, like Freemasonry, we individually recognize this. She also holds to the fact that man must be free by birth, by inclination, and environment, and yet must freely offer himself to a perfect obedience. No society of men has a larger conception of the freedom of man, and none at the same time makes so great a demand for his implicit, silent and ready obedience to authority Well, then, her magic of appeal form in itself a trinity of attractions, namely, religion, ethics and knowledge, and the ordering of the physical life of her sons. Let us think of the first and greatest of this trinity.
To-day it is not an uncommon thing to hear men say that religion is played out. Not so Masonry, Masonry requires of all its sons that they accept God as the Creator, the Father, and the Judge of mankind. She realizes the need of these thoughts, for she is a profound student of the human disposition, and sees its tendency to degeneration through wayward passion, neglect of knowledge, and disregard of discipline, for all of which God, the Creator, Father and Judge, is the only corrective.
Freemasonry knows that men are ever shy in expressing themselves on the subject of religion in words, and she bids them express their religion in deeds and in living. She tells them to accept God, obey Him, and believe in Him, and there she leaves it—surely she shows her wisdom and her beauty in so doing! We who in this respect have followed her teaching for many years have never regretted it—not for one moment. Our regrets are for our omissions and our disobedience, and for nothing else. This is what Freemasonry brings to the Freemason when he receives her ancient charges and hears her laws to all her sons.
Did you ever stop to think where Freemasonry got her conception of religion? She did not adopt as the central thought of her religious formula the teachings of Buddha, or Mahomet, or Confucius, though each of these has to-day its many millions of followers, and each continues to have a vast influence on the history of the human race. No; she chose the religion of that remarkable race, the Jews — chose not the religion of a man, but the religion of a race. Buddha was a man, Confucius and Mahomet were men, but the Jewish religion was the religion of a whole people. It is strange that throughout all the centuries to-day we cannot find a people so permeated with the religion of God, the great Creator, as that of the Jews. It has coloured all their poetry, all their art, their literature, all their life. Even to-day, when so many have drifted from the ancient ideas, to them this religion is the one great factor of human life.
When religion is the religion of a man people will discuss it, quarrel over it, take sides for or against it; but when it is the religion of a race it becomes the silent but powerful undercurrent of their national life. To the Jew religion has never been a matter of talk or dispute, but an ethic of life.
In our ancient Fraternity we do not talk of forms of religion. We realize the danger of talking on forms of religion. We accept religion, accept God— God the Creator, Father and Judge. Our thoughts may be too deep for words, but we always find religion in life and nature. Religion may often be cold and callous, and, alas, as we look through the pages of history we find that it can be cruel; and none of those features have died out of religion to-day. And here we see the marvellous gift Freemasonry seems to have had. She says, “I want the perfect man, and to see him satisfied.” So she emphasizes the further need of knowledge and beauty. When religion tends to become callous, narrow and cruel it is because of ignorance and the loss of the sense of ethical beauty. She therefore lays down the need of knowledge and of beauty. To obtain the beautiful in life there must be the power to find beauty in God, and in the life of man.
The soul of man craves beauty, but in its ignorance often mistakes charm for beauty, passion for love, sensuality for sensitiveness. How many Masons are thus carried away and fall because of the specious temptations of body and* mind! The corrective for this is true knowledge and a true conception of beauty as the illumination and purifier of life and living. For this corrective she chose as a pattern of knowledge, ethics, architecture and beauty, that wonderful nation Greece, of which the learning and art still stand supreme while the people have fallen into decadence. As a nation the Greece of the ancients scarcely exists to-day, but its knowledge, ethics and skill live, as they have lived through the centuries. Therefore even to-day Plato and Aristotle stand as the arbiters of reason and logic, Aeschylus of drama, Themistocles of history, Demosthenes for oratory.
Now, why, again, should she have chosen Greece? Why did she not go to the wonderful literature and art of Egypt; to the splendid art and lore of India; or to those wonderful Oriental races of China and Japan? It was because she found real beauty and thought in that of Greece. Its beauty lacked the lowness of passion, and its art was always uplifting. The art of other ancient civilizations of the Orient was beautiful, but degrading; their literature was grand, but often prone to passion. Their people, as a consequence, sank lower in the scale of humanity and further away from the Great Architect of the Universe. Not so with the knowledge and beauty taught by Freemasonry. By it her sons are led to betterness of living, to increased helpfulness to their fellow-men, and are taught to play a part in their day and generation that shall prove a worthy heritage for the children yet unborn.
But finally, Masonry is practical as well as profound. She knows that men are not all alike, and that that which appeals to one may appeal very slightly to others. The love and adoration of God, the great unending theme of eternity, lives behind all our thoughts, sounds as the undertone of all human lives; but it does not make the motive of most lives. Were it so the world would be vastly different. For many reasons, to the vast majority God is both unknown and little sought. So also knowledge and beauty are the infinite craving of the infinite capacity of humanity; but man often prefers the finite, and as he crudely and concisely formulates it, “We have one life, let us make the best of it while we have it” ; or “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”
She has realized that the average man is not extremely religious, not receptive to things of mind and noble imagination. She knows that the majority of men are living a more or less purely physical life; men to whom work is livelihood, and so to whom their bodies are the means of the attainment of competency and comfort. She thinks, therefore, of what is needed for the salvation of the body, and she knows wherein lies the danger of the purely working life.
The solution that Freemasonry offers is the setting before a man the magnificent thought that he can never be a really good man except he possess a great ideal; except he learn the secret of hope, faith and love, unity, discipline, purity, self-sacrifice, and the love of his labour not for what it gave him in money, but for what it added to his happiness by crowning him with the dignity of a true workman.
For this, the third part of her appeal, Freemasonry went to the Middle Ages. We all heard this afternoon, and again this evening, of the work of the workers of those great days, the great cathedrals, the sacred fanes distributed all through the countries of Europe. Never since has civilized labor produced such historic landmarks, for never since those times has labour felt to the same extent the inspiration of work as being done to the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe. The power of the human soul lay behind the chisel and mallet and twenty-four inch guage — the soul of man consciously dedicating the labour of his hands to God. In addition, the labour of those days meant knowledge both individual and co-operative, coupled to a genuine love of the beautiful. Often the Mason studied his work that he might not merely place his stone correctly, but that it might add to- the scheme of beauty and harmony; that each column should be a tower of perfection, and each arch not a contract, but a dream to appeal to the imagination of the worshipper. We do not wonder, then, that at the end of his labour each Mason set his mark upon the stone as a memorial of the dignity of his labour—humble in that he left his name unknown, proud that his mark should witness to his being a Mason.
Is it not well to feel what a heritage we have in all this? To-day the world is throbbing with unrest. It is unhappy through selfishness. There is a determination to get everything for self. And in the midst of all this stands this marvellous band of men who are ready, if true to themselves, to be the salvation of humanity — this mass of Masonry, not this Grand Lodge or the Grand Lodges of Canada, but Masonry. It is well to accept Masonry and be proud of it, but it is also a dastardly thing if when a man goes before the Great Architect of the Universe he cannot feel that he has lived up to its ancient charges. No Mason is worthy of its ancient charges if he does not fear, honour and love the Great Architect of the Universe.
To me it is a wonderful thing to see you all here. I shall always remember this gathering, as I have no doubt you all will, and think of the great possibilities you have when you carry out through life the duties you owe to the principles of Antient Free Masonry. I know there are many of you who are older than I am, but I am old enough to know that the inner wishes of our lives are greater than the outward phases. You who are beginning this march toward eternity—or which some of us are now well advanced — on you rests not only the carrying out of these principles, but of achieving all that is beautiful, and all that enhances happiness, and all that comes from the thoughts and fulfilment of duty and love. The design of your lives should be “based on the thought and love of the Great Architect of the Universe, and as you all gather that message to your inner selves, you will achieve all that is beautiful and happy until that time when, at the pleasure of the Great Architect of the Universe, we shall meet together at last in the Grand Lodge above. (Hearty and long-continued applause)."
Source: Grand Lodge of B.C. Proceedings, 1921, pages 55-60
The Reverend Cato Ensor Sharp as Grand Master, 1903
