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.