w far does all this extend?
To courts and suits at law? Are criminals as safe or safer before
judge and jury of their order? Have rebellion and vice found greater
security here? This boast is confession--confession that the ties of
an order are stronger and more felt than is consistent with a proper
love of country. Is justice thus to be imperiled? Are securities of
property and rights thus to be imperiled? Must we beggar ourselves by
paying fees and dues to one another of these orders, now becoming more
plentiful every decade, to make sure of standing on equal footing and
impartiality with others, in the courts and elsewhere, and imagine
that all this is helpful to patriotism or even consistent with it?

_Fourthly. Religion_ has no need of them. "The church is the pillar
and ground of the truth." "The gates of hell shall not prevail against
it." The preaching of Christ and him crucified is and must continue to
be the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. _Religion_,
then, has no need of these secret orders.

We come now to this: Neither charity, morality, patriotism, nor
religion imposes obligations on us to join them. _It will not pay_ was
our first fact. We have now reached this other, that _no consideration
of duty_ requires it. But,

IS IT RIGHT?

_First. Christ, our Master, neither instituted nor countenanced these
orders_. Reviewing his whole earthly ministry, he said (John xviii:
20): "I spake openly to the world;" and "in secret have I said
nothing." By this double affirmation he strongly suggested his
preference for _open, unsecret_ ways and proceedings.

_Secondly. In those rites, proceedings, and regalia which do appear,
these orders are frivolous_, belittling, and unworthy of respect. If
the revealed are such, what must the unrevealed be?

_Thirdly. These orders stand convicted of deceit and falsehood_. They
profess secrets and mysteries worth buying. Hundreds of high-minded
men, of irreproachable character and integrity, who have, therefore,
"renounced these hidden things of dishonesty," testify over their own
signatures, that their secrets are but signs, pass-words, ceremonies,
etc., covering nothing but emptiness and vanity.

_Fourthly. These orders are unfriendly to domestic happiness and
well-being_, breaking in upon the sacred confidence and unity of
husband and wife, pledging him to conceal from her the proceedings of
perhaps fifty nights yearly, thus often sowing seeds of distru