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

resist incumbent evils, and the existence of such societies not be disclosed, if the state of the case would thus give them greater power for good. So, as a defense against known disloyal secret organizations, secret loyal leagues were rightfully resorted to as a means of united and concentrated action against organized disloyalty. And if, in resisting moral evils, secrecy gives power and advantage in devising measures to resist vice and crime, it is not sinful to resort to it.

All boards of trust generally have secret sessions, and legislative bodies resort to secret sessions rightfully, if the state of affairs demands it. It will be seen that secrecy is justified and demanded by peculiar circumstances or obvious ends to be gained. The reason of the case, therefore, is against secrecy, and in favor of open action, where no such justification can be made out. It is the nature of truth and right to be open. All things tend to it. There is nothing covered or concealed that shall not finally be proclaimed.

On the other hand, if secrecy is resorted to without reason; if it is made the basis of false pretences; if it assumes the existence of something that is not, then it is not defensible. If it involves a profession of information to be communicated, and influences for good to be exerted, that do not exist, then it is a species of intellectual swindling which admits of no defense. The sciences and arts, the Bible and nature, are open to all. So is the book of history. What new science, or art, or history, or religion is there for secret societies to disclose?


III. Religious rites or worship in societies, open or secret-are any allowable? and, if so, what?


In order to answer this question, we need to consider certain fundamental and vital principles of Christianity.

1. All men, as depraved and guilty, need regeneration and pardon
through the intervention of Christ.

2. There is access to the true God only through Christ: "I am the
way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but
through me."

3. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father; but he
that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also."

All Christian churches are based on these truths, and the center and culmination of their worship is this recognition of Christ in the Sacrament as the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. Christ, too, is the center of the worship of heaven.

Hence, if Christians associate with others in worship, it can rightly be only on the ground that the worship centers in Christ, and acknowledges him as Lord, to the glory of the Father.

Hence, if, for the sake of extending an organization, men are admitted of all religions-Pagans, Mohammedans, Deists, Jews-and if, for the sake of accommodating them with a common ground of union, Christ is ignored, and the God of nature or of creation is professedly worshiped, and morality inculcated solely on natural grounds, then such worship is not accepted by the real God and Father of the universe, for he looks on it as involving the rejection and dishonor, nay, the renewed crucifixion of his Son. As to Christ, he tolerates no neutrality. He who is not for him is against him. These principles do not involve the question of secrecy. They hold true of all societies, open or secret.

If, on such anti-Christian grounds, prayers are framed, rites established, and chaplains appointed, ignoring Christ and his intercession, God regards it as a mockery and an insult to himself and his church. In it is revealed the hatred of Satan to Christ. By it Christ is dethroned and Satan exalted.

These principles do not exclude worship and prayer from societies. In any societies, true worship in the name of Christ will be accepted.

Let us now apply these principles to the societies of Free Masonry, the modern mother of secret societies. Concerning these we hold it to be plain:

That they have neither science nor art to impart as a reward of membership. The time was when there was a society, or societies, of working masons, coming down from the old Roman empire, and extending through the middle ages. These were societies of great power, and wrought great works. The cathedrals of the middle ages were each erected by such a corporation, and attest their skill and energy.

But these corporations of working masons have passed away, and Masonry is now, even in profession, only theoretical, and in fact, so far as this art is concerned, is not even this. It does not teach the theory of architecture. The transition took place in 1717, after a period of decline in the lodges of working masons. All pretences to a history back of this, or to any connection with Solomon or Hiram, are mere false pretences and delusion for effect. No art is taught and no science is communicated by the system.

Practical ends, then, alone remain; and, in fact, the founders of the system avowed "brotherly love, relief, and truth" as these ends. The cultivation of social intercourse is also avowed as an end by defenders of the system. But such ends as these furnish no good reasons for secrecy; nor is secrecy favorable to a wise and economical use of the income of such bodies for purposes of benevolence. An open and public acknowledgment of receipts and expenditures is needed as a safeguard against a dishonest and wasteful expenditure of funds.

Nor is this all. The secrecy of the order, taken in connection with the principle of hierarchal concentration, and with the administration of extra-judicial oaths of obedience and secrecy, renders it, as a system, liable to great abuses in the perversion of justice, in the overriding of national law, and the claims of patriotism.

But the most serious view of the case lies in the fact that it professes to rest on a religious basis, and to have religious temples, yet is avowedly based on a platform that ignores Christ and Christianity as supreme and essential to true allegiance to the real God of the universe. Its worship, therefore, taken as a system, is in rivalry to and in derogation of Christ and Christianity.

And, as a matter of fact, this and similar systems are by many regarded as a substitute for the church, or as superior to it. Moreover, devotion to them absorbs time and interest due to the church, and paralyzes Christians by association with worldly men, and by the malignant power of the spirit of the world.

This system, and those who imitate its hierarchal and centralizing organization, also give power to those hierarchal principles and systems against which Congregationalism has ever protested as corrupting and enslaving the church.

The system also cultivates a love of swelling titles, and of gaudy decorations and display in dress, that are hostile to the genius of our Constitution, and to true republican and Christian dignity and simplicity.

From this system other organizations have borrowed much, and some do not essentially differ from it in practical working.

Other organizations, however, for the ends of temperance reform, have adopted modes of organization, display in dress, and secret signs for the purposes of recognition and defense. The ends and proceedings of these temperance societies are so well known that it is often denied that they are secret societies; yet they do, avowedly for purposes of defense, resort to secrecy, and have imitated modes of dress and organization found in Masonry. And members of Masonic lodges declare that they involve, in fact, all the principles of Masonic organizations, and rely on them ultimately leading to their own order.

While we recognize the true devotion of the members of these societies to the cause of temperance, and acknowledge and commend their active efforts to resist the progress of one of the greatest evils of the age, we yet can not concede the wisdom or desirableness of a resort to principles and modes of action which tend to create a current toward other secret organizations not aiming at their ends, nor actuated by their spirit of temperance reform.

In conclusion, we respectfully present the Association the following principles foradoption [sic]:

Resolved , 1. That in dealing with secret organizations, this
Association recognizes the need of a careful statement of principles
and a wise discrimination of things that differ.

2. That there are some legitimate concealments of an organized
character-such as the privacies of the family and business firms,
the temporary concealment of public negotiations at critical stages,
the occasional withdrawal of scandals which could only disturb and
demoralize communities, and the secrecy of military combinations;
nor are we prepared totally to condemn all private plans and
arrangements between good and true citizens, in great emergencies,
to resist the machinations of the wicked.

3. That organizations whose whole object and general method are well
understood, and are known to be laudable and moral-such as
associations for purely literary or reformatory purposes-are not to
be sweepingly condemned by reason of a thin veil of secrecy covering
their precise methods of procedure; yet we deem that outer veil of
secrecy to be unwise and undesirable, inasmuch as it holds out
needless temptations to deeds of darkness, and gives unnecessary
countenance to other and unlawful combinations; and, whenever the
act of membership involves an unconditional oath or promise of
submission, adhesion, and concealment, under all circumstnces [sic],
that compact is a grave moral wrong.

4. That there are certain other wide-spread organizations-such as
Freemasonry-which, we suppose, are in their nature hostile to good
citizenship and true religion, because they exact initiatory oaths
of blind compliance and concealment incompatible with the claims of
equal justice toward man and a good conscience toward God; because
they may easily, and sometimes have actually, become combinations
against the due process of law and government; because, while
claiming a religious character, they, in their rituals, deliberately
withhold all recognition of Christ as their only Savior, and of
Christianity as the only true religion; because, while they are, in
fact, nothing but restricted partnerships or companies for mutual
insurance and protection, they ostentatiously parade this
characterless engagement as a substitute for brotherly love and true
benevolence; because they bring good men in confidential relations
to bad men; and because, while in theory, they supplant the church
of Christ, they do also, in fact, largely tend to withdraw the
sympathy and active zeal of professing Christians from their
respective churches. Against all connections with such associations
we earnestly advise the members of our churches, and exhort them,
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers."