SECRET SOCIETIES | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 21, 1881

SECRET SOCIETIES.

The following words are reported from Mr. Moody on secret orders: "But says one, what do you say about these secret temperance orders?"

The same thing. Do no evil that good may come. You never can reform anything by unequally yoking yourself with unholy men. True reformers separate themselves from the world. 'But,' one of you say, 'you had one of them in your own church.' So I did, but when I found out what it was, I cleaned it out like a cage of unclean birds. They drew in a lot of young men of the church in the name of temperance, and then they got up a dance and kept them out until after twelve at night. I was a partaker of their sin because I let them get into the church; but they were cleaned out, and they never came back. This idea of promoting temperance by yoking one's self up in that way with ungodly men is abominable. The most abominable meeting I ever attended was a temperance meeting in England. It was full of secret societies, and there was no Christianity about it. I felt as though I had got into Sodom, and got out as soon as I could. A man rescued from intemperance by a society not working on Christian principles, gets filled with pride, and boasts about reforming himself. Such a man is harder to save than a drunkard.