ENTANGLING ALLIANCES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 23, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 30.

ENTANGLING ALLIANCES.

"Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." 2 Tim. 2:3, 4. One of these "affairs of this world" that is very entangling, because of the good it aims to do, is comprised in the category of secret societies. It is a peculiarity of worldly hindrances to the cause of Christ, that the better they appear the more subtle is their detriment to real Gospel work. In the Cynosure of June is a report of a certain experience meeting, in which Rev. W. L. Clapp, of Chicago, spoke in part as follows:—

As to the effect of secret societies in the work, I want to speak of an experience that we had in a little church in this city. I noticed that we had the prayer-meeting on Thursday instead of Wednesday evening. I learned afterward that the lodge met Wednesday evening, and therefore the prayer-meeting was changed to Thursday evening. After I had been there a couple of months, one of the deacons came to me, and I passed the time with him just before service, and asked him why he was not out to the morning service. "Well," he said, "it is like this. On Saturday night our lodge hold all their social gatherings, and as you know it is pretty early before we get away, and I never feel like coming to church on Sunday morning." I said, "You are not putting your lodge before your church, are you?" He said, "I think if I live up to what is taught in the ritual of our lodge, there will be no doubt about my getting to heaven."

And that is the conception that the ordinary person has about the teaching of the lodge. This is true of not only one deacon, but three others in that church, and one of them has never been in the prayer-meeting in all the time we have been there, nearly a year, on the ground that he has to be up at four o'clock in the morning. No trouble at all to stay out to the gathering of the lodge. It is true of all the deacons, and further, it has extended to the young people. In view of these men who are older in life, the young people say, "Here is So-and-so in a lodge; if they are in the lodge, it must be all right. I will take them as my guide," and the result of that has been that those whom we have had in office have objected to the proclamation of truth along that line, and have severed their connection, if not from the church, have at least dropped active church work, because they did not believe in that thing.

The above clearly shows what has been pointed out so many times, that in many cases, if not all, the lodge becomes a rival to Christianity, and is therefore anti-Christian. We do not see how this logic can be evaded.