Untitled article by Pres. Blanchard

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 12, 1867

SECRET ORDERS.

By Pres. Blanchard

The general revival and almost universal popularity of the Secret Orders in this country, is undoubtedly one of the worst features and most dangerous symptoms of this age. You and I can remember the time when by the mere force of popular discussion, the lodge had become so unpopular, that a man who values his credit among his neighbors would as soon have been caught with a stolen sheep on his shoulder as with a masonic apron on his person. And we know, also, for we have stood by as witnesses, that this state of the popular mind has been reversed, and the dark orders rise everywhere.

“Hang out these banners on the outer wall,” by no one right motive, truth, or reason addressed to the popular mind! No mass meeting has been called to reconsider the claims and do justice to the merits of the suppressed Lodges. No popular appeal, no public debates, such as everywhere attended and caused the revolution of the popular mind against Slavery, as also against Popery in Luther’s days, and indeed every good cause which has prevailed since man was placed on earth! nothing of all these.

But the Lodges have crept back into our towns and villages like the brothels which are the Scriptural symbols of all spurious rites and worship; by night, by silence, by secrecy, by hints, by innuendoes, by lures addressed to lusts, and not by arguments addressed to the understanding.

The only semblance of argument I have heard, and which has ventured to stand out and challenge our scrutiny, has been that “our poor soldiers were safer, and surer of favors, if taken prisoners in our late war, for being Masons.”

And yet with harlot facility of affirming and denying the same thing in the same breath, the same persons who justify our soldiers in lodge joining, with the hope of favors from traitors and rebels, will spurn the idea that loyal Masons would show favor to rebel Masons to the injury of the country! Whereas, as a rule, the rebels were far more in earnest in their treason than our men were in their loyalty. So, either the lure of hopes for protection and favor from rebel lodge-men was a swindling falsehood used to fill the lodges with our troops, or the same powerful cause which could change traitors into friends to loyal soldiers must have made loyal men friends to traitors and so protected Lee’s house; guarded rebel property; turned our troops into rebel sentinels over houses whose inmates shot them like dogs while they were doing dog-service for them; nay, the same secret power has been, and, as Thaddeus Stevens intimated, is still mighty enough to shield Andrew Johnson from impeachment and Jefferson Davis from the gallows!

As a Christian, I have little to do with these things but to mourn over the crime, treason and danger which they imply. Still, as Christians, we shut not our eyes to what is going on in the world around us.

My dear brother, surely these are the last days, and

“When God resolves to scourge a nation’s sins, ’Tis in the church the leprosy begins.”

Be it ours to follow Christ in his cleansing of his temple. The mightiest power on earth to manage mind is to-day, and ever has been, sham solemn rites, debauching conscience with spurious, solemn obligations, which, excluding Christ, really belong to the god of this world who is Satan!

My dear brother, some earnest Christians in these parts are moving for a convention to call our nation to prayer that this dark incubus may be shaken off from the churches of Christ. Cannot such a national Convention be held?

Yours very respectfully, in Christ, and for a pure Christianity.—Pres. Blanchard in Earnest Christian.