-Caveat Lector-
from:
Arena Magazine
1890s
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An old rant. Raises some interesting questions about secrecy.
Om
k
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SECRET SOCIETIES AND THE STATE.
BY J. M. FOSTER.
IT has been authoritatively stated that "there are in the United States over
fifty distinct secret orders, with over 70,000 lodges and 5,500,000 members.
This does not include members of the various labor organizations, or the
500,000 members of secret military orders, such as the G. A. R., or those
connected with college secret fraternities. These numbers will not include as
many persons, since one man is often a member of two or more societies, but
it is safe to say that in all there are fully 6,000.000 persons in this
country held in the coil-, of Secretism."* Has the state any duty to perform
with reference to this gigantic power, which is growing at the rate of
300,000 members per annum?[*Report on Secret Societies In Reformed
Presbyterian Synod, June, 1897. ]
This leads to another inquiry: What is the nature and province of the state?
I answer,
1. The state is not a voluntary association. A man may join a voluntary
association or not, just as lie elects. But has he this option in civil
society? He is born into the state, and is by nature subject to its laws. The
corporation and the nation differ as greatly as the artificial and the
natural. The corporation is the creature of the state, is responsible to the
state; and appeal can always be had from it to the state. But the state is
the creature of God, accountable to none but Him for the -use it makes of the
great power-, with which He has invested it. "It is something monstrous,"
said Thomas Arnold of Rugby, "that the ultimate powers in human life should
be destitute of the sense of right and wrong"; and that comes only from a
sense of responsibility to God.
2. It is not a social compact. The atheist Hobbes of Malmesbury originated
this idea. Denying the existence of any fixed standard of right, and
consequently that there could be any such thing as virtue or vice, this
speculative philosopher resolved all law into one, the will of the
legislature. But who were his disciples? None but the godless, the
dissipated, the scorners of all that is sacred. The heart of England was
shocked at its blasphemy. It was stoutly resisted by the great thinkers of
tile seventeenth century as undermining the foundations of civil society and
absorbing justice in the consciousness of power. After the Long Parliament,
Hobbes fled to Paris to escape the evils of his own doctrines. The clearest
assertion of this doctrine was in France, and its highest development -was in
the Contrat Social of Rousseau. But the dissemination of this doctrine cost
that nation the Reign of Terror. There can be no doubt that this theory had
its influence in the Convention which framed our national Constitution in 1787
, for, as Franklin said, with three or four exceptions the members thought
prayers unnecessary. Such a convention would be expected to give us a
constitution that does not acknowledge Almighty God as the source of all
authority and power, nor the Lord Jesus Christ as the divinely appointed
Ruler of nations, nor the Bible as the fountain of all law. But the American
people never have voted and never would vote to reject the higher law and
Lawgiver.
3. It is God's moral ordinance. It is that settled order of things which is
manifestly in harmony with the divine will. It has its necessity in the
constitution of our nature, and its authority in God's word: "The powers that
be are ordained of God." It is clothed with authority and powers Which
transcend all human institutions, and thus becomes the heaven-ordained and
heaven-commissioned agent representing the divine authority among men.
I. The being of the state is from God. The Creator has established divine
institutions among men for specific purposes. The family is a divine
institution. Marriage is an ordinance of God. It is God's appointed method
of restraining vice, fostering virtue, multiplying the human race, and
developing the better sentiments of the human heart. It has its necessity in
the very constitution of our nature, and its authority in God's word: "They
twain shall be one flesh." The Church, is a divine institution. It is "the
kingdom of heaven" among men. Its organization is from God. "Upon this Rock
I will build my church." Its authority is from God. "I will give to thee the
keys of the kingdom of heaven." Its constitution is from God. "Unto them were
committed the oracles of God." Its laws are from God. "Teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Its commission is from
God. "Go ye into all the World and preach the gospel to every creature." Its
duties as the witness for the truth have been enjoined. "Ye are my witnesses,
saith the Lord." The state is another divine institution. It is the
arrangement, the appointment, the contrivance of heaven for man. It is the
divinely appointed custodian of the rights of the people. It exists for the
punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of them that do well. It guards
the family. It protects the church.
God has appointed these three institutions in which the man is to be
developed to the full girth and proportion of perfect manhood, to the measure
of the stature of the fulness of a perfect man.
But the secret, oath-bound lodge is a mere human device. It lays upon its
members obligations, with the solemnity of an oath oft repeated, that are
inconsistent with loyalty to these divine ordinances. A man who performs all
his duties properly in the home, the church, and civil society has no time or
energy or means to devote to the secret lodge. It is a matter Of Unlimited
experience that the good lodge member neglects his duties in one or other of
these divine institutions. What is inconsistent with God's appointed order
ought not to exist.
II. The powers of the state come, from God. The state Wields tremendous
powers. It has the power to levy taxes, to institute a tariff, and to
regulate that mighty factor in our commercial life the currency. It has the
power to organize schools, to enter the homes, take the children, place them
in the schools and educate them, without asking the leave of the parents. It
has the power to draw out all the physical, mental, and moral forces of the
nation in self-defence, just as a sword is drawn from its sheath. It has the
power of life and death. This does not reside in the individual. No man has a
right to take away his own life, much less to employ another to do
it for him. No company of men, even seventy millions, has the right to
execute the criminal. And yet the state everyday exercises a power which does
not reside in the individual or the mass. Where does it get this power? The
only answer is: "Power comes from Almighty God." As the Savior said to
Pilate, "Thou could'st have no power over me at all except it were given to
thee from above." In the 82nd Psalm rulers are called "gods," because they
represent God on earth. In the 13th chapter of Romans rulers are called
"God's ministers." They are clothed with authority from Him, and they
administer His law. Civil government is the arm of Jehovah administering the
affairs of His government among men. But secret oath-bound lodges are
intruders upon this divine prerogative of the state.
The society of Jesus was organized by Ignatius Loyola in 1540. It is secret
and oath-bound. The Encyclopædia Britannica says: "Jesuitry is a naked sword,
with its hilt at Rome and its point everywhere." Every Jesuit is bound by
oath to poverty, chastity, and obedience. Coligny was brutally murdered by
the Jesuits on the night of St. Bartholomew, Aug. 24, 1572. William the
Silent, Prince of Orange, was struck down by Girard, a Spanish Jesuit, July
10, 1584. A Jesuit assassin, Ravaillac, stabbed Henry IV, May 14, 1610. The
disloyal oaths caused the Jesuits to be expellel[sic] from Prussia, Italy,
Austria, France. Many went to South America, a few to England. An old order
of the masonic craft existed there, imported from Syria, whence it had come
from the East. The Jesuits joined this order. They secured the protection of
princes for the' craft, and hence were called "Free." Charles I, Charles II,
and James II joined the order, with many princes, though they never lifted a
mason's tool. Hence the term "Accepted." The banishment of Charles II seems
to have suggested to these Jesuits the first three degrees of apprentice,
fellow-craft, and master mason. The grand lodge was not organized in London
until June 24, 1717. :But these Jesuits went with the banished King Charles
IT to France and organized lodges there.
>From the members of these lodges who had taken the first three degrees, they
organized another order called the Illuminati. This was nothing but a school
of atheism and anarchy. It grew with wonderful rapidity. The French nation
was honeycombed with it. The whole people were prepared for resisting
authority. Mirabeau, the profligate and disappointed politician, and the Duke
of Orleans, his silly tool, were at the head of this secret order. They
issued the mandate. The dynamite exploded. France was deluged with blood.
The French Revolution was enacted. Anyone wishing to trace the steps of this
tragedy, should read "The Conspiracy in Europe," by John Robinson, A. M.
Professor of Natural Philosophy, and secretary to the Royal Society of
Edinburgh. * [*He belonged to the lodge In Scotland. He took forty-five
degrees In Parts. He was made the custodian of the papers of the French
lodge. Ile travelled extensively In Europe and collected documentary evidence
from many lodges. He clearly proved a "conspiracy against all the religions
and governments of Europe, carried on In the secret meetings 0f ,slasons,
illuminati, and Reading Societies," and pub11shed these In a volume of 390
pages, in 1798. He divided the book Into four chap. ters: 1. The Masonic
Schism; 2. The Illuminati; S. The German Union; 4. The French Revolution.]
What the Jesuits have done in France through the Masonic lodge, they may do
in the United States. We know that Jesuits priests ire in 100,000
confessionals in our country, and these are so many telephones, bringing them
into speaking communication with our homes, offices, schools, churches,
courts, and legislative halls Many of our great cities are in the hands of
the Jesuits. Some of our legislatures are under their power. The Jesuits at
Washington have a, Way of bringing Senators and Representatives to their way
of thinking. The daily press of our country is largely under their hand. They
are making a deadly assault upon our public schools. The time is near when
our government will be compelled to follow the example of the continent and
expel the Jesuits.
The murder of William Morgan in 1826 by the Freemasons caused forty-five out
of every fifty of the members to leave the order. In their indignation they
exposed the oaths by which the lodge members are bound. This gave rise to the
law which was passed by the Vermont Legislature in 1833.
A person who administers to another an oath or affirmation, or obligation in
the nature of an oath, which is not required or authorized by law, or a
person who voluntarily suffers such oath or obligation to be administered to
him, or voluntarily takes the same, shall be fined not more than $100 and not
less than $50; but this section shall not prohibit an oath or affidavit for
the purpose of establishing a claim, petition, or application by an
individual or corporation administered without intentional secrecy by a
person authorized to administer oaths, or an oath or affidavit for the
verification of commercial papers or documents relating to property, or which
may be required by a public officer or tribunal of the United States, or of
any State, or any other country, nor abridge the authority of the magistrate.
In 1839 the legislature increased the penalty to $200. Massachusetts and New
Hampshire adopted this law. Daniel Webster, the great lawyer and statesman,
said:
All secret associations, the members of which take upon themselves
extraordinary obligations to one another and are bound together by secret
oaths, are natural sources of jealousy and just alarm to others, and
especially unfavorable to harmony and mutual confidence among men living
together under public institutions; and are dangerous to the general cause of
civil liberty and justice. Under the influence of this conviction I heartily
approve the law lately enacted in the State of which I am a citizen, for
abolishing all such oaths and obligations.
Massachusetts repealed this law in 1880. In 1893 the Masonic Lodge of
Worcester, Mass., was incorporated under the general law of the State. But
this was not deemed sufficient. And in 1896 the legislature passed an act
authorizing the Masons to build a temple, have a library, hall, lectures, and
a benevolent fund. This statute, empowers them to accumulate property and do
business to any extent they desire. Such powers in the hands of secret lodges
are dangerous to any municipality.
In Hartford, Conn., in August, 1895, Dr. Griswold, a Mason, set fire to his
buildings to get the insurance. He confided the facts to Dr. Jackson, a
brother Mason. Dr. Jackson laid the facts before the civil authorities. The
culprit was tried and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. Then the
Hartford Lodge tried Dr. Jackson for unmasonic conduct in informing on that
guilty brother, and expelled him. The lodge in that case was used against law
and justice
In Illinois, a judge refused to recognize the sign of distress given by a
brother Mason, who was the criminal in the dock. He said: "I will not
recognize those signs when I am on the bench." But his Masonic oath bound him
to recognize them, find his lodge censured him for his unmasonic, conduct.
Thaddeus Stevens said: "By Freemasonry, trial by jury is transformed into an
engine of despotism and Masonic fraud."
The government found it necessary to assail the "Knights of the Golden
Circle" during the war, for they were plotting to destroy it. It became
necessary to throttle the Molly Maguires and the Ku-Klux Klans as a means of
self-protection. The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that
anyone who has taken the Endowment-House oaths of the Mormon hierarchy should
not be naturalized, and if he has been naturalized, should be disfranchised.
Let it be proclaimed in trumpet tones, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, that
the highest tribunal in our land has decreed that the secret oaths of that
religious fraternity disqualify those taking them from becoming citizens; or i
f citizens, from exercising the privileges of citizenship. The murder of Dr.
Cronin in Chicago led to the trial of the order of Clan-na-Gael. Their horrid
oaths were exposed, just as the wicked oaths of the Endowment House in Salt
Lake City were brought to light in the trial over the Idaho test-oaths
disfranchising Mormons. The courts have decided that these disloyal oaths
disqualify those taking them for citizenship.
The secret order of Mafia came over to us from Italy. They showed their true.
character in the murder of Chief of Police Hennessey, of New Orleans. That
assassination was a crime which demanded retribution. Eleven members of the
order were put on trial. Through fear of the order the jury acquitted them. A
mob attacked the prison that very night and summarily despatched these guilty
wretches. That massacre cannot be justified. It was mob law, and that is a
danger and a symptom of a greater evil behind it. 'When justice breaks over
its legal bounds, no one is safe, and. the insidious -disease of anarchy is
underneath. But a secret order that is an oathbound gang of ruffians and
brigands cannot be tolerated here. That massacre is the handwriting on the
walls of the secret dens of the Mafia.
The Highbinders of California have been imported hither from China. They are
a secret, oath-bound, murderous order. The courts have dealt with them just
as with the Mafia
These facts lead us to the conclusion that the power of the government ought
to be invoked in the destruction of all secret, oath-bound lodges. The
Vermont law should be adopted by every State in the Union. Congress should
crystallize it in a similar national law. That will drive these secret
societies beyond our borders.
III. The laws of the state come from God. Law is the expression of the will
of God. The phrase of Hooker is too sublime ever to become trite: "Law has
its seat in the bosom of God, and its voice is the harmony of the world." Two
thoughts filled the mind of Kant with ever-increasing admiration and delight:
"The starry heavens above us, God's law within us." Cicero long ago declared
that "those who fail to recognize the will of God as the basis of all law,
lay the foundation of government tanquam in aquis, as it were in the waters."
Blackstone said: "Any law that contravenes the law of God is no law at all."
Man cannot make law. He may discover and interpret and apply God's law. God
gave the ten commandments to the Jewish nation as their constitution. They
are the basis of all moral legislation.
Justinian, the Roman emperor, made the decalogue the basis of his Tribonian
Code. Charlemagne issued a code of laws based upon the ten commandments.
Alfred the good, king of England, gave his people a code founded upon the law
of Sinai. The Magna Charta of King John was drawn from the law of Moses. John
Calvin and the Reformers of Switzerland founded the Genevan Republic. They
built upon the two tables of Sinai. William the Silent and the Reformers
established the Dutch Republic. It was founded upon the ten commandments.
Pym, Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell, and the Puritans gave England civil and
religious liberty. Knox, Henderson, Melville, and the Covenanters gave
Scotland civil and religious liberty. They gave what, Moses had given them.
The Puritans of England, the Covenanters of Scotland, the Huguenots of
France, and the Dutch Reformers from Holland brought civil and religious
liberty to America. Plymouth Rock means the ten commandments. Our republic is
the lineal descendant of the lawgiver of Sinai. The state is the divinely
appointed keeper of both tables of the Decalogue. The majesty of law has been
committed to the civil power.
Here is the basis of moral legislation. Here we find the divine commission of
the state to deal with the Secret Lodge System.
1. The authority of the Lodge over its members is inimical to public justice.
Mackey's "Lexicon," page 8, says: "The Master is supreme in the Lodge. Such a
thing as an appeal from the Master to the Lodge is unknown in Masonry. The
power of the Master is supreme." Page 103: "The government of the Grand Lodge
is completely despotic; its edict must be respected, obeyed without
examination by its subordinate Lodges." The English nation could behead their
king, and America could impeach their president, but the tyrant of the Lodge
cannot be appealed from. "Should the Grand Lodge decree wrongfully or
contrary to the ancient constitutions, there is no redress for its
subordinates." "The Master is supreme arbiter in all questions of order. For
no misdemeanor, however great, can lie be tried by his Lodge, for as no one
has a right to preside there. in his presence except himself, it would be
absurd to suppose that be could sit as judge in his own case." If there is
any such thing as a dangerous combination, the Lodge is one. An officer of a
Grand Lodge in Missouri, in 1867, said:
Not only do we know no North, no South, no East, no West, but we know no
government save our own. To every government save that of Masonry, and to
each and all alike, we are foreigners. We are a nation of men bound to each
other only by Masonic ties, as citizens of the world, and that world the
world of 'Masonry; brethren to each other all the world over; foreigners to
all the world besides.
That is either pure bombast or the rankest treason. In either case those
sentiments are unworthy and dangerous.
2. The oaths of the Lodge are a menace to public rights. Take the first three
degrees of Masonry. The Entered Apprentice swears to keep the Lodge secrets,
on the Bible, in the name of God, on the penalty of having his throat cut,
his tongue torn out by the roots, and his body buried in the rough sands of
the sea at low-water mark. The Fellow-Craft oath, besides secrecy, adds a
promise to abide by all Lodge rules, obey signs and summonses, assist poor
Fellow-Crafts, etc., under penalty of having his breast torn open and his
heart plucked out and exposed,, to be devoured by the vultures of the air,,
etc. The Master Mason's oath adds the keeping of a brother Master Mason's
secrets, murder and treason excepted, and they left to his own discretion,
binding him under no less a penalty than that of having his body severed in
twain, his bowels taken out and burned to ashes, and the ashes scattered on
the rough sands of the sea, where the tide ebbs and flows twice every
twenty-four hours. The Royal Arch degree amends the above thus: `Murder and
treason not excepted." These oaths and imprecations increase in blasphemy and
barbarity through all the thirty-three degrees.
These oaths are taken either in jest or in earnest. If the former, they
should be prohibited, because they tend to break down the sacredness of the
oath. If sincerely, who is to inflict these horrid penalties? Does the Lodge
punish its guilty members thus? These oaths are dangerous and disloyal, and
should be prohibited.
3. The false religion of the Lodge corrupts society. The Lodge is a
religion. Mackey speaks of a Mason as "free from sin by living up to the,
rules of the order." "The white apron is by its symbolic purity to aid us to
that purity of life and conduct which will enable us to present ourselves
before the Grand Master of the universe unstained with sin." Masonry consists
in a knowledge of the great truths, that there is one God, and that the soul
is immortal."
The Grand Sire of the Odd Fellows, in consecrating their cemetery near
Chicago in 1868, said: "Our Grand Master will take all who are buried in this
ground to Himself in the day when he makes up His Jewels."
In the Lodge, Pagan, Mohammedan, Jew, and Christian unite in worship. But
whom do they worship? Not the Christian's God, for it is not good Masonry to
mention the name of Christ in the first three degrees. The worship in which
all join without Christ is not the worship of the true God. It is the worship
of Satan. They sacrifice to devils, not to God. As was said of the
Samaritans, whose religion was a strange medley of the heathen nations with
whom the King of Babylon colonized the land and the few Israelites left after
the deportation of the ten tribes: "They feared Jehovah and served graven
The Tremont Temple Baptist congregation worshipped in Music Hall while the
Temple was being rebuilt. On Easter Sabbath afternoon, 1896, some 2,500
knights marched into the hall in full uniform. The Boston Christian Endeavor
choir occupied the platform. A Sire Knight presented the Baptist congregation
with a lecturn, a bronze pulpit, the figure of an angel whose uplifted hands
supported an open Bible, the gift of the Lodge, valued at $1,500. Rev. George
C. Lorimer, D. D., the pastor, accepted it on behalf of the congregation.
Then the Endeavorers and Knights joined in singing hymns, and the
congregation helped them. Was that not a repetition of the Samaritan
compromise in God's worship? Dr. Lorimer was giving one hand to Christ and
the other to the devil. Let our government remove this alluring tempter, the
Lodge.
4. The Lodge is the enemy of the home. How often a Mason spends $300 for his
uniform, while his wife wears a $1.50 calico dress. A writer in the North
American Review for May last, says:
For mere personal gratification, aside from any real or supposed benefits,
the members of the various fraternities in the United States spend annually.
$250,000,000. It would all but revolutionize a large section of American
society, if the wives and daughters of the households of the men who belong
to these organizations should insist on their right to spend for their own
adornment, or for their own personal pleasure, dollar for dollar spent by
husband or brother for initiation fees, dues, uniforms and regalia, swords,
plumes, banners, and banquets.
The moral standard of the Lodge is shocking. Think of the Master Mason's
oath. After the Jubula, Jubulo, Jubulum scenes, in which the candidate for
the third degree has been struck in the throat by the first ruffian, Jubula,
and on the left breast by the second ruffian, Jubulo, and in the bowels by
Jubulum, the third ruffian, who kills him outright, and, at the end of
fourteen days, he is raised from the grave, the following oath is
administered, among others:
I do promise and swear that I will not have carnal or illicit intercourse
with the wife, mother, daughter, or sister of a brother of this degree,
knowing her to be such, nor will I permit another brother of this degree to
do so if in my power to prevent it
The implication of that oath smells of the bottomless pit. Who would allow
that standard of morals in society?
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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