In the Masonic Ritual, the Speculative Freemason is reminded that, as the Operative Artists erects his temporal building in accordance with the rules and designs laid down on the Trestle-Board of the Master Workman, so should he erect that spiritual building, of which the material is a type, in obedience to the rules and designs, the precepts and commands, laid down by the Grand Architect of the Universe in those great books of nature and revelation which constitute the spiritual Trestle-Board of every Freemason.

The Trestle-Board is then the Symbol of the natural and moral law. Like every other Symbol of the Order, it is universal and tolerant in its application, and while, as Christian Freemasons, we cling with unfaltering integrity to the explanation which makes the Scriptures of both Dispensations our Trestle-Board, we permit our Jewish and Mohammedan Brethren to content themselves with the books of the Old Testament or Koran. Freemasonry does not interfere with the peculiar form or development of any one’s religious faith. All that it asks is that the interpretation of the symbol shall be according to what each one supposes to be the revealed will of his creator. But so rigidly exacting is it that the symbol shall be preserved and, in some rational way, interpreted, that it peremptorily excludes the atheist from its communion, because, believing in no Supreme Being-no Divine Architect-he must necessarily be without a spiritual Trestle-Board on which the designs of that Being may be inscribed for his direction.