SHALL CHRISTIANS JOIN SECRET SOCIETIES?

[Shall Christians Join Secret Societies?] [Supposing it to be Innocent, Will It Pay?] [Is it Obligatory?] [Is it Right?]

"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.

Fourthly. These orders are unfriendly to domestic happiness and well-being, breaking in upon the sacred confidence and unity of husband and wife, pledging him to conceal from her the proceedings of perhaps fifty nights yearly, thus often sowing seeds of distrust, filling his breast with what must not be divulged to her, involving him in affairs and habits not unfrequently injurious to the best interests and state of the family.

Fifthly. These orders are hostile to the heavenly-mindedness, the spirituality of those who join them. We speak from much testimony. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed." The prudent man foreseeth the evil, but the foolish pass on and are punished. This voice of one is that of many concurring wise, faithful, and godly men, viz.: "I am afraid of these secret societies; they have sucked the spirituality out of all the members in our church who have joined them." Young, promising Christians have often been blighted by them. The fervor of piety, interest in the church and its work, interest in Christ and his people, interest in God's Word and Spirit, all the various elements of an earnest life of faith and heavenly-mindedness have been blighted in these lodges. And in urging this, we appeal to so many witnesses, and cover so wide a field of observation, as to make it certain that this is not the exceptional but the ordinary result.

Sixthly. These orders tend to destroy Christian fellowship. Let them grow until a given church is broken into squads, each pledged to secrets from the other, but bound within itself by special ties; give to each its own weekly meeting, mysteries, rites, signs, grips, pass-words; let each be sworn to provide for, protect, shield, and love its own adherents above others, and is not "church fellowship" annihilated? Can the Spirit of Christ flow freely from member to member through such partitions? Is this "one body in Christ, and every one members one of another?"

Seventhly. These orders tend to subject the church to "the world" in some of its dearest interests. For example: When a few leading members join a neighboring lodge, and make vows to the "strange" brotherhood, how easy for that lodge to interfere secretly but controllingly in its discipline of members, or in its selection or dismission of a pastor! These suggestions are not merely imaginary. Subjection of the church, in this way, to the cunning craftiness of evil and designing men is no mere dream.

Eighthly. These orders dishonor Christ. Those claims which he makes for himself are disallowed. He is required to disappear or find a place amidst other objects for worship. There is a necessity, because these orders are designed for adherents of all religions. Were they on the footing of an insurance company or a merchants' exchange, or any similar body, this fact would not be so. But they profess to include religion among their elements, and its services, in whole or in part, among their ceremonies. They have prayers and solemn religious rites. And in these Christ is dishonored. His exclusive claims are disallowed or ignored, and this not by accident, but of set purpose. Out of twenty-three forms of prayer in the "New Masonic Trestle-Board," (Boston edition, 1850,) only one even alludes to him, and that one in a non-committal way. These secret orders are under bonds not to honor Christ as he claims, lest the Jew, or the Deist, or the Mohammedan, all of whom they seek to enroll in equal membership, should be offended. When the higher "degrees" of Masonry allude to Christ and Christianity, it is but as one amidst many equals. We repeat it: Did these orders stand on the same footing with mercantile or other bodies in this matter, this objection might go for nothing; but they do not. Unlike them, they profess to have religious services. Indeed, they often boast of their religiousness, and avow their full equality in this with the church of God itself! Yet, if you join them, their "constitutions" prohibit you acknowledging, in their boasted religious services, what Christ, your Lord, not only claims for himself, but commands you to give unto him: that glory which is due to his holy name. Are they, then, not Anti-christ in this thing? And can you, without sin, consent to it, or uphold institutions which forbid you and others, in religious services, to honor him as your God and Savior, and which thus place him on the same level with Zoroaster, Confucius, or Mohammed?

Ninthly. These orders--the things now alleged being true--impede the cause and kingdom of God, and are, therefore, hostile to the largest, best, and deepest interests of mankind. Recognizing this, churches, conferences, associations, synods, and many eminently godly men, living and dead, have put forth their solemn testimony against them. Great lawyers, like Samuel Dexter; great patriots and statesmen, like Adams, and Webster, and Everett; great communities, like the American people from 1826 to 1830, have united to declare them not only "wrong in their very principles," but "noxious to mankind." But many Christians, rising higher and standing on "a more sure word of prophecy," have discovered in them the enemies of the Gospel and of the cross of Christ. Following him, their great exemplar in philanthropy as in godliness, who did nothing in secret, they refuse to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, choosing rather to reprove them.

Shall Christians join secret societies?

Will it pay? Are they under obligation to do so? Fellow-disciple, brother man, have you doubt on these questions? If it will not pay; if you are under no obligation to do it; if you have any doubt of its rightfulness, it is most assuredly your duty to refuse any connection with them.

We have no wish to press our reasoning beyond just limits. We have sought to avoid extreme statements. We now ask you whether, in the light of what has been brought to view, the weight of argument is not against your joining these orders and lending them aid? Even should you be able to stand up against their tendency to lower your personal piety and injure your Christian character, have we not here one of those cases where many brothers are offended or made weak? The Lord Jesus has said, "Whoso offends one of these little [or weak] ones, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea." Will you, then, however safe yourself, be the means, by your example, of bringing weaker brethren into such dangers? "We, then, that are strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak, and not please ourselves." "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth or is offended [caused to sin] or is made weak." These words are not ours; they are God's.

Christian disciple, decide this question of secret societies with candor, with solemn prayer, and with a purpose to please God.

A PAPER ADOPTED BY THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF ILLINOIS OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES, AT THEIR MEETING IN OTTAWA, 1866.

[CHAPTER I] [CHAPTER II] [CHAPTER III]

The topics committed to us involve the following points:

[1. The moral character of secrecy]. Is it an element of an invariable moral character? and, if so, what? and, if not, what are the decisive criteria of its character?

[2. Associations or combinations involving secrecy]. Are they of necessity right or wrong? If not, what are the decisive criteria?

[3. Religious rites and worship in societies or organizations, open or secret]. Are any kind allowable? and, if so, what?

I. Secrecy, Its character.

A presumption against secrecy arises from the known fact that evil-doers of all kinds resort to secrecy. This is for two reasons: (1.) To avoid opposition and retribution; and, (2,) to avoid exposure to disgrace. The adulterer seeks secrecy; so do the thief and the counterfeiter; so do conspirators for evil ends.

Secrecy, whenever resorted to for evil ends, is wrong. But may it not be resorted to for good ends? and is it not recognized as often wise and right in the Word of God? We answer in the affirmative. There is a certain degree of reserve, or secrecy, that should invest every individual. Our whole range of thought and feeling ought not to be promiscuously made known. There is a degree of secrecy necessary in the order, social intercourse, and discipline of the family. There is secrecy needed in dealing with faults and sins. Christ adopts this principle in his discipline. He says, "Tell him his fault between him and thee alone. If he repents, conceal it." There are confidential communications for important ends, or for council.

Concealment may be used as a defense against enemies, as in the case of the spies of Joshua, or the messengers of David, or when Elisha hid himself by the brook Oherith, by God's order. So God hides the good in his secret place and under his wings.

Secrecy is opposed to ostentation and love of human applause. Hence, alms and prayer are to be in secret. God also resorts to secrecy in an eminent degree. He hides himself. He dwells in thick darkness. It is his glory to conceal his designs. In part, this is inevitable by reason of his greatness; in part, he resorts to it of set purpose.

It is a special honor and blessing of the good that he discloses his secrets to them.

Secrecy, then, is not of necessity wrong. Its character depends upon the ends for which it is used, and the circumstances and spirit in which it is used. There is a secrecy of wisdom, love, and justice, as well as a secrecy of selfish, malevolent, and evil deeds.

II. Secret societies.

Of these there may be two degrees.

1. Where not only the proceedings of the society are secret, but even the existence of such a society is concealed.

2. Where the existence is avowed, and the signs and proceedings only are secret.

In associations, secrecy may be resorted to in both these ways for evil ends. Men may combine in associated societies to prey on the community, and the existence of such societies be hidden. Counterfeiters, horse-thieves, burglars, may thus associate for wrong, in the deepest secrecy.

So, too, secret associations whose existence is avowed may combine for selfish ends, and in derogation of the common rights of the social system. They may defend their members, to the injury of justice, in our courts. They may interfere with the management of churches and societies. They may bring an influence of intimidation to bear on public men. They may disseminate false principles of religion and morals. They may co-operate for political ends, and to effect revolutions.

And yet it is no less true that, in certain circumstances, secret societies of both kinds may be resorted to for good ends.

Secret societies may be rightfully resorted to for common council and united action, in the fear of God and with prayer, in a very dangerous state of the body politic, to 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."