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Read Ebook: Secret Societies: A Discussion of Their Character and Claims by Beecher Edward Blanchard Jonathan Macdill David
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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 :
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