Volume of Sacred Law (VSL) is the Masonic term for whatever religious or philosophical texts are displayed during a Lodge meeting.
In English-speaking countries, this is most often the King James Version of the Bible or another standard translation of the Bible. If a Lodge has non-Christian members, other texts may be used, and in Lodges with a membership of mixed religions it is common to find more than one sacred text displayed. Every candidate is given his choice of religious text for his Obligation according to his beliefs.
One of the most notable individual VSLs is the George Washington Inaugural Bible. It belongs to St. John's Lodge No. 1 in New York City and has been used at its meetings since 1767. It is famous, however, for being the Bible used at the first inauguration of George Washington as President of the United States. It was also used (sometimes in conjunction with another Bible) for the Presidential inaugurations of Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter.
Famous quotes containing the words volume of, volume, sacred and/or law:
“Thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain
Unmixed with baser matter.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading ... may be given without first getting the author’s permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Whatever has made, or does make, or may make music, should be held sacred as the golden bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia’s horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)