CHAPTER V.

Is the struggle hopeless? It was counted a great praise to a Roman that he bought at full price the ground on which the Carthaginians were camped when the awful Hannibal was thun- dering at the gates of the Eternal City. If Chris- tians had always the faith in righteousness that that patriot had in Rome, the cause of truth would advance far more rapidly and evils would be more quickly driven into darkness.
“Through all the long, dark night of vears,
The peoples’ cry ascendeth ; And earth is wet with blood and tears. But our meek sufferance endeth ; The few shall not forever rule, The many toil in sorrow ; The powers of hell are strong to-day, But Christ shall reign to-morrow.”
But we have not always the faith we should have, and hence the truth often goes alone and unhelped, while falsehood, fraud and oppression walk the world in insolence and triumph. Sab-
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bath breaking, profanity, intemperance, lust and greed reaps each its bloody harvest year by year, while the church, which ought to confront and denounce and destroy these enemies of God and man, too frequently lies behind her earthworks, afraid to offer battle. I am satisfied that cow- ardice and avarice, but especially cowardice, are the great obstacles to the coming of God’s king- dom on earth.
This failure on our part is sure to be most costly in the end. Consider the case of American slavery. One hundred years ago slaveholders admitted the wickedness of the system. Wash- ington and Jefferson were expecting its removal. Courage and faith in the church would have wiped out the stain, and at the cost of a few millions of dollars have saved the awful years of blood and carnage which came in the sixties.
We trifled with wrong, and a system which offered no apology for existence one hundred years ago, fifty years ago took the nation by the throat and demanded perpetual control.
The present situation of the liquor trade in our country is another case in point. A major- ity of our people know it to be the burglar, high- wayman, sneak thief and assassin that it is. If it would lie down and die scores of millions of our people who now lift neither voice nor hand
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to put it out of the way would rejoice. But they are faint-hearted and hopeless. They do not be- lieve that anything effective can be done, so they do nothing and old King Alcohol, smeared with the blood of women and-children,-rules his blear- ‘eyed, bloated subjects from his dunghill throne while the church of Jesus Christ stands by in in- difference or terror. The civil power which she possesses is each year put into the bloody paw of the saloon.
Just so at the present time, multitudes, if not a majority of the Christian church know, at least in part, the desperately evil character of lodgism. They see young men who are bright, earnest Christians grow cold in the service of the Savior after the lodge serpent has struck his fangs into them. They see young men clean in morals be- come vile and polluted through the evil night as- sociations of secretism. They see the prayer- meeting and the active work of the church pass- ing into control of women and children. It is true that they do not know all they might nor all they should, but they do know enough to lead them to warn and entreat young men to keep away from these snares and pitfalls where so many have been destroyed, but they say, ‘‘Noth- ing can be done,” they do nothing, and the awful lodge procession, with its dancing, its drunken-
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ness, its Sabbath breaking, its licentiousness, its political corruption, its ruined men and women, marches on.
Now, no one but an atheist has any right to despair. If God is, then in the end righteous-
ness must triumph and every brave word spoken:
for it will have its place and part in the conquest of the world. Jesus taught us to pray daily that God’s kingdom might come and His will be done on earth as it is now done in heaven. This prayer has now been uttered for near two thousand years, it is prayed each day by millions of human souls.
God gives attention. He has sworn by Him- self that this petition shall have abundant answer and to affirm the invincibility of any iniquity is to declare that Satan rules and that God has lost His power. This many professed Christians care- lessly do. Dr. Talmage is reported to have said: “The Sunday newspaper is here to stay.” Others say: “The trade in intoxicants can never be sup- pressed.” Others tell us that the awful trade in the virtue of woman will never end. All these voices are atheistic and no man who professes to believe in God should ever again utter such libels against His character.
But we are not compelled to rest upon reason and the word of God alone, though they would
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be quite sufficient for the faith of Christians. God does not work so rapidly as our human ignorance, weakness and impatience would have Him work, but all the time He works and one who sees what He has done should gain hope and courage con- cerning what He is yet to do. When the disci- ples of Jesus went out to teach the nations, des- potism was the only form of government in the world. Woman was then the plaything or the slave of man; throughout great nations she was not believed to possess a soul. Childhood had no rights which age was bound to respect. Even Plato justified the exposure to death of children who were not strong and well. The vast ma- jority of men were slaves and earth was then “a wide and dreary prison.”
That the Christian faith has been the cause of the removal of these evils, the story of which curdles the blood with horror, no intelligent man can doubt. One by one through the slow lapsing centuries the oppressions and cruelties have faded out until now the earth begins to take on the forms of justice, peace and happiness. In the memory of middle-aged men American slavery has passed away, though even its enemies could not see how the change was to come. It is said that years ago Queen Victoria invited Harriet Beecher Stowe to meet her and during the visit
2608 Modern Sccret Societies.
presented to her a pair of bracelets. She said: “Mrs. Stowe, I have had engraven on one of these the date of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. When it is abolished in the United States you can have that date placed upon the other.”
Narrating this incident to a company on this side, Mrs. Stowe is reported to have said: “I shall not live to see this date placed, nor will my daughter, but her child will see that blessed day.” Yet American slavery had slept in its bloody grave the lifetime of a generation before Mrs. Stowe went to her reward.
The power of lodgism is waning to-day. Thou- sands of members leave secret societies annually and many of them are ready to testify to the evil character of the orders they leave. Other thou- sands who would otherwise unite with them are kept from that bondage by timely warning. The orders are compassing sea and land for proselytes but are failing to get the industrious. thoughtful, earnest men whom they wish as members.
Every knee shall bow and every tongue con- fess to God. All power in heaven and earth is given into the hand of Jesus. Every plant which our heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up. Secret associations with their false claims to benevolence and other virtues, with
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their scandalous initiations in which each year many men are injured or killed, with their obli- gations to a partial honesty, a partial charity, and a’ partial chastity, with their obligations’ to conceal the secrets of lodge brethren, which lead to lying in business and perjury in courts, with their tinsel regalias, their grandiloquent titles, their Christless ceremonies and their yoking of good and bad in unequal fellowship, these must pass away before the Lord’s prayer can be an- swered;-and that petition offered through cen- turies by multitudes of millions, by old saints entering into glory and little children at their mother’s knees, that petition will be answered so surely as God sits upon the throne,
SP LOsG. Ex-President of Lima College, and Minister of the Ohio Lutheran
Synod.
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DOES OPPOSITION TO LODGES INJURE THE PERSONS OR CHURCHES THAT OFFER IT?
The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus junto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard i, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and fol- lowed thee; what shall we have therefore? And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall be last: and the last shall be first—Matt., 19 :20-30.
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