Anti-Masonic Remarks on the Masonic Temple Dedication
By J. Blanchard
[Remarks of President J. Blanchard of Wheaton College, Illinois, at a meeting in the 1st Reformed Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Rev. T. P. Stevenson pastor: on Monday evening, September 1, on the Mammoth Masonic Temple, to be dedicated Friday, September 26, 1873.] The Masonic fraternity have announced the dedication of their Temple to take place on Friday, the 26th inst. And as I consider the event a grave and important epoch in the history of this city, State, and nation, I respectfully submit some facts and reasonings concerning it. The corner-stone of this building, its friends tell us, was laid June 25, 1868, in the presence of ten thousand free-masons, with the gavel used by Washington in laying the corner-stone of the National Capitol. As the records of your State Legislature, during the administration of Governor Ritner, contain a report showing that Washington had visited a lodge but once or twice in the last thirty years preceding his letter affirming the fact, and as he steadfastly refused to be met and recognized as a free-mason when requested by lodges to be so recognized, in his journeys through the country, and as free-masons have never printed, or shown any record or proof of the fact of Washington’s officiating as a lodge-master in laying the corner-stone of our Capitol, and as it is very obvious they would print such proof if they had any; this story, trifling in itself, must be set down along with similar stories of relics to deceive the multitude, as invented for effect, and resting on mere Masonic assertion. But the building itself is a serious affair. Its height of tower is two hundred and fifty feet, and the dimensions one hundred and fifty by two hundred and fifty feet on the ground. This vast pile has been erected at a cost, they tell us, of one million, four hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars. To enable free-masons to raise this vast sum, they inform us that your Legislature, April 3, 1869, authorized them to issue and sell bonds bearing interest at eight per cent, which was two per cent above the legal rate. These bonds have been sold to local lodges, to charity funds, and to the people direct, for money to build the Temple, and are now in the hands of the purchasers, claims against the Temple and its managers. Of course, every bond-holder has thus a personal interest in the life and success of the Lodge; that he may get his interest, and finally, the principal, of these bonds. A considerable amount of these bonds is taken up by persons who are not free-masons. One such man has taken forty thousand dollars’ worth of them, and many other men, and eighty-eight women, have been induced to pay their money for these bonds. The effect of this is to give citizens who are not free-masons, and especially the wealthy women of Philadelphia, a money interest in the life of the Lodge, as betting on an election brings those who will lose by the failure of a candidate, to wish and work for his election. This is the more noticeable, as the same parties tell us in the Ledger of last week, that “all the workmen upon the building have been free-masons.” Thus, though none but the initiated were allowed to labor and receive pay, the money was drawn, as far as possible, from persons outside of the order. This is to operate in the coming struggle; as the Cotton Loan so called, which depended on the success of the rebellion, influenced Great Britain to recognize the attempt of rebels to destroy popular government as lawful warfare. The British people had a money interest in the destruction of the United States Republic, the saving of slavery, and the establishment of an empire on its ruins. A similar interest is created among the capitalists of Philadelphia, in the life and success of the Pennsylvania Lodges, by these bonds, which are to be paid, if at all, by the working-people of the State, in fees for initiating them into the local Lodges. This is explicitly stated by the writer describing the Temple in the Ledger. He says:—
“The subordinate bodies are perfectly able and willing to pay; they having raised their dues to meet the increased expenditure. From nine to twelve dollars are now the annual dues in the Philadelphia Lodges, with life membership in proportion. The lowest figure for an initiation is seventy-five dollars.”
Thus this great Temple has been built by money borrowed from the people, and in part from outsiders, thus bribing the cap italists by a money interest in the Lodge, and the chief reliance to pay them is on initiations—FUTURE initiations of mechanics, merchants, and other industrious persons, at seventy-five dollars apiece! For a Lodge orator said only last week, “Our chief reliance is on the working-people. For the rich have the means of instruction and amusement in other ways;” but the Lodge, he said, was the place for the instruction and elevation of the industrious classes. The same Masonic writer in the Ledger states the number of Pennsylvania Lodges at three hundred and forty-five, and the free-masons in the State at thirty-six thousand one hundred and eighty-five. And Samuel C. Perkins of Philadelphia, chairman of the Temple Building Committee, is, at the same time, master of the Grand Lodge, which Grand Lodge can confiscate and seize all the property of every local Lodge in the State, if they refuse to pay any taxes imposed on them.—See Chase Dig. Mas. Law, pp. 28, 448. The initiation of these thirty-six thousand one hundred and eighty-five free-masons of Pennsylvania, at fifty dollars each, before initiations were raised to seventy-five dollars, has cost the laboring people of this State already, $1,809,250. And now a like sum is to be drawn from their industry, and that of their wives and children, by future dues and initiations. And for what? The description of the temple is gorgeous, and its finishing and furniture, magnificent. But the splendor of his divan does not save the sultan from contempt, or prove that there is either intelligence in the Turkish people, or wisdom, or goodness, or strength in their empire. We are told by the describer of the Temple in the Ledger, that “The building contains, altogether, one Grand, and six subordinate Lodge rooms, one Grand, and one subordinate, Chapter room; an asylum; council chamber, and attendant apartments for Knights Templar; two banquet halls; a library, and a multitude of smaller apartments.” For whom and for what purpose are this “multitude of smaller apartments”? And this “Temple” is to be “dedicated.” A Temple we are told by Webster, is “An edifice erected to the honor of some deity.” And the same authority tells us that to dedicate is to “consecrate,” “devote,” or set “apart.” To what God is this Temple to be dedicated by a series of banquets, processions and carousals running through several days? Surely not to the God of the Bible. This is not pretended, even by Masons themselves. But let us draw near, and examine the religion in whose interest this Temple is built, and which is to be practiced within its walled recesses. I will take my authority from the standard books of the order—Mackey’s Lexicon, Mackey’s Cyclopedia, Chase’s Digest of Masonic Law; and from these, and from facts familiar to the world outside the Lodge, as well as from the records of Courts and Legislatures, we all know, or may know, the following things concerning this religion:— It is a religion in which heathen, Jew, and Christian, meet on a common level. It swears its members to lifelong concealment of something, they neither know nor can know what. It packs its members in layers of degrees, each upper degree being sworn to concealment from all below. It drops Jesus Christ as a Saviour from its published creed and prayers in the first three degrees, or from Masonry proper. It substitutes another date for “Anno Domini,” putting “Anno Lucis” in its place, thus striking out the Christian era. It is a religion which excludes woman. Its published laws also exclude the old and the young, the married and unfortunate, and indeed all but robust men who have the known means of paying their dues. And from history and the records of Courts and Legislatures, we know, or may know, that it is a secret voluntary society in our midst, claiming the right to inflict death by horrible mutilation, and in many cases inflicting death for disobedience to its laws. And we know, or may know, that it drops justice from its theory of human society and substitutes the favoritism of a class. Now the building of this Temple in this city, by the operation of causes seen on the bare mention of them, will multiply the power of the Lodge over Society in this city, and State, an hundred-fold if not a thousand-fold, in the family, in the court-room, in the jury room, in the church, slowly absorbing all power into itself, as soon as it is found that civil and municipal laws are no protection for person and property from civil and municipal institutions, will surely, if slowly, sink into popular contempt, and the fear and dread of the Lodge, as once the tramp of the inquisition, will produce the universal silence of despair. My respected friends and brethren, I most devoutly believe that if you should characterize that dedication day according to the greatness of the calamity it portends, you would designate it as black Friday in the calendar of the city, that your churches would be draped in mourning, and the national colors hung at half mast. Do you ask, what then shall we do? I answer: Speak, WRITE, READ, PRINT, AND PRAY! Now! before our sons, blinded by its sorceries, have become the mind-slaves of the Lodge! Now! before our daughters dance with the Knights Templar, priests, and grand high priests and kings of this Republic, in the late hours of night until weary of the revel! Now! in God’s name and in truth; while yet there is time and hope! Before this dark system has turned and transformed men into the fiends it is sure to make them in the end! Let us do our whole duty to God and to man. Darkness cannot stand before light. The Lodge gasps at discussion. Have we forgotten that when this question was once taken to the people, fifteen hundred Lodges answered by giving up their charters? Have we forgotten that nothing but American slavery then kept the Lodge from utter demolition? Thanks be to Almighty God, we have no slavery to shelter free-masonry now. And if we are but true to God and our Republic; our children and our children’s children, instead of being prisoners in that Bastile of souls, called a Masonic Temple, will see that vast pile, like the old Masonic Temple of Boston, converted into a building for United States Courts; or, haply, into a Temple of the true God, where Christ shall be honored as the Saviour of men.—Christian Statesman.