Secret Societies, Edward Beecher and Jonathan Blanchard and David MacDill [ebook reader that looks like a book .txt] 📗

vain boasting of their members. They claim that their members are a chosen board, a select few, who, by virtue of their association, are superior to the rest of mankind. Their processions and parades, their regalia and emblems, and their high-sounding titles are evidently designed to impress the minds of their own members and of outsiders with ideas of their excellence and grandeur. Their high-sounding titles have already been adverted to as involving the sin of profaneness; but they serve equally well to illustrate the pretentious character of the associations which employ them. Almost every officer among the Masons has some great title. There is the Grand Tyler, Grand Steward, Grand Treasurer, Grand Secretary, Grand Chaplain, and Grand Master. The Lodge itself is grand , and, of course, every thing and every body connected with it are grand . The treasurer, though his duty be merely to count and hold a little vile trash called money, is grand; almost every officer is a grand man.

These titles, however, do not give an adequate idea of the grandeur to which "sublime" Masonry ascends. They have their Right Worshipful Deputy Grand Master, their Right Worshipful Grand Treasurer [sic], Most Worshipful Grand Master, Most Eminent Grand Commander, Thrice Illustrious Grand Puissant, Most Excellent Grand High Priest, etc. (Constitution [sic] of Grand Lodge of Ohio, Art. 5., Webb's Monitor, pp. 187, 219, 284.) Other associations employ similar titles; indeed, Masonry, as the oldest association, seems to have been copied after by the rest. The Odd-fellows have almost the same parades, shows, and titles as the Masons. They have their aprons, ribbons, rosettes, and drawn swords; and they endeavor, by these and other clap-trap means, to recommend their association as a grand affair. They, too, have their Right Worthy Grand Lodge, Most Worthy Grand Master, Right Worthy Grand Secretary, Right Worthy Grand Treasurer, Right Worthy Grand Chaplain, etc.

We think it strange that men of sense should employ such titles. They would be ridiculous even applied to the greatest and best man that ever lived. They are more ridiculous than the bombastic titles given to civil officers in barbarous countries. The Sublime Porte of Turkey is outdone in this respect by secret associations in the United States.

6. The absurdity of these high-sounding titles and other puerilities is further seen from the character of those who compose the associations which employ them. They boast that they receive as members almost all sorts of men except atheists; that men of every religious sect and every nation meet in their lodges as loving brethren, and on a perfect equality; that they welcome the Jew, the Arab, the Chinaman, the American savage, the infidel, and the Christian, provided they be sound in body and be able to support themselves; yet the officers elected by the lodges or squads of such persons, Jews, Arabs, Chinamen, savages, infidels and Christians, become Most Eminent Grand Commanders, Thrice Illustrious Puissants, etc. Yea, since brotherhood and equality characterize these associations, the Jew, the Arab, the Chinaman, and the infidel are eligible to any office, and may become Most Worshipful Grand Commanders and Most Excellent Grand High Priests.

All this is calculated to produce laughter and contempt; but such is not the design. The design of those who make use of these grand titles and other clap-trap things is to recommend their associations as an excellent and grand affair. The design itself, and the means employed for its accomplishment, must, certainly, be condemned by every unprejudiced Christian [sic] mind.


CONCLUSION.


We have thus briefly stated the objectionable features of what are generally called secret societies. It is mainly to their secrecy, oaths, and promises, their profanation of holy things, their exclusiveness and their setting up of false claims, to which we object. These are the things objected to in the foregoing treatise. We have written without any feeling of unkindness, and we trust, also, without prejudice. We had intended to urge additional considerations to show the evil nature and tendency of secret societies; but we have been restrained by the fear of swelling our treatise beyond a proper size.


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SHALL CHRISTIANS JOIN SECRET SOCIETIES?

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SHALL CHRISTIANS JOIN SECRET SOCIETIES?

"With charity for all and with malice toward none," we bring this question to all those who would serve Christ. We mean by "secret societies" not literary, scientific, or college associations, which merely use privacy as a screen against intrusion, but those affiliated and centralized "orders" spreading over the land, professing mysteries, practicing secret rites, binding by oaths, admitting by signs and pass-words, solemnly pledging their members to mutual protection, and commonly constructed in "degrees," each higher one imposing fresh fees, oaths, and obligations, and swearing the initiated to secrecy even from lower "degrees" in the same Order.

Shall Christians join societies of this kind?

SUPPOSING IT TO BE INNOCENT, WILL IT PAY?

First . They consume time and money. Have you considered how much? How many evenings, and whole nights, and parts of days? How many dollars in fees, dues, fines, expenses, and diminished proceeds from broken days? Will it pay? Can you not lay out this amount of time and money more profitably?-a plain man's question. They propose helping you to "friends," "business," in "moral reform," in "sickness, death, and bereavement;" but can you not get as much of such good in ways pointed out to you by Christ, your best and wisest friend?-ways which will yield you more of personal cultivation, spiritual good, earthly profit, social and domestic happiness, and openings for usefulness. If so, these orders are unprofitable, and will not pay .

Secondly . They furnish inferior security for investments. As mutual insurance societies , they are irresponsible, and more liable to corruption, just because they are secret . Do they make "reports" to the public or the Legislature? Do they make any adequate "report" to the mass even of their own members? Millions and millions are known to have gone into the treasury of a single one of these organizations. No dividends are declared, no expenditures published. Where is the money? Were it not safer to invest the same amount in companies where every proceeding is open to public eye and public judgment? Would you not, then, be safer? If so, it will not pay to join these orders.

IS IT OBLIGATORY?

First. Charity has no need of them. They are not truly charitable institutions. "Mutual insurance societies" they may be, though of an inferior sort, as we have seen; but that does not elevate them into
charitable institutions. To bestow on your widow and orphans, your sickness, and funeral some pittance, or the whole of what you paid during health and life, is not benevolence .

But, further, it is well to ask, in determining how greatly charity depends on them, how broadly they go forth among the poor outside their membership. During the anti-masonic excitement of 1826-1830 some two thousand lodges suspended. The resultant suffering was less, perhaps, than what would follow the suspension of a single soup association, any winter, in some city. Blot out the whole, and how small the injury to the charities of the country!

The Church of Christ is commanded to "do good unto all men"-"to remember the poor." It is engaged in this work. It blows no trumpet-it does not parade its charities; but it shrinks from comparison with no one of these orders, nor with all of them combined.
Christians need not to go into them to preserve charity alive, or to find the best ways of exercising their own.

Secondly. Morality does not depend on them. We need say nothing of "what is done of them in secret." But, looking at what is open to all, we ask, What work are they doing worthy of so much organization, and expense, and time to reclaim the fallen, to banish vice, and to save its victim? We have heard them refusing him admission or cutting him off, but we have not heard of any considerable aid which they have given to public or private morality. And, further, do we not find them narrowing the circle of obligation, substituting attachment and duty to an order for love and obligations to mankind? Membership in a lodge, not character , is held to make one "worthy," opening the way to favor and society. But can all this be done without sensibly weakening the fundamental supports of morality, without lessening its broad requirements?

Thirdly. Patriotism has no need of them. They tend to destroy citizenship, to exalt love of an order above the love of country. The boast during the late rebellion was sometimes heard that their members, owing to the oaths of mutual protection, were safer among the rebels than other captives. Was the converse true? Were rebels, being Freemasons, safe or safer against restraint and due punishment when, falling captive to those of their order? How far does all this extend? To courts and suits at law? Are criminals as safe or safer before judge and jury of their order? Have rebellion and vice found greater security here? This boast is confession-confession that the ties of an order are stronger and more felt than is consistent with a proper love of country. Is justice thus to be imperiled? Are securities of property and rights thus to be imperiled? Must we beggar ourselves by paying fees and dues to one another of these orders, now becoming more plentiful every decade, to make sure of standing on equal footing and impartiality with others, in the courts and elsewhere, and imagine that all this is helpful to patriotism or even consistent with it?

Fourthly. Religion has no need of them. "The church is the pillar and ground of the truth." "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The preaching of Christ and him crucified is and must continue to be the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. Religion , then, has no need of these secret orders.

We come now to this: Neither charity, morality, patriotism, nor religion imposes obligations on us to join them. It will not pay was our first fact. We have now reached this other, that no consideration of duty requires it. But,

IS IT RIGHT?

First. Christ, our Master, neither instituted nor countenanced these orders . Reviewing his whole earthly ministry, he said (John xviii: 20): "I spake openly to the world;" and "in secret have I said nothing." By this double affirmation he strongly suggested his preference for open, unsecret ways and proceedings.

Secondly. In those rites, proceedings, and regalia which do appear, these orders are frivolous , belittling, and unworthy of respect. If the revealed are such, what must the unrevealed be?

Thirdly. These orders stand convicted of deceit and falsehood . They profess secrets and mysteries worth buying. Hundreds of high-minded men, of irreproachable character and integrity, who have, therefore, "renounced these hidden things of dishonesty," testify over their own signatures, that their secrets are but signs, pass-words, ceremonies, etc., covering nothing but emptiness and vanity.