Corky Is Back

Corky is back and some may say, "So what."

Anyway, I hope my extended absence was noticed by some. This last few months have been filled with new adventures for an old man. Like, having all my teeth pulled as a pre-op requirement, having a knee joint replaced and having a month of pain killers and physical therapy. It really has ruined my creative interests for awhile. Thankfully, I have regained an interest in the world and was just installed as Secretary of Waller Masonic Lodge #808 AF & AM..

The Patriot Guard Riders Revisited

The following was a comment recently added to the Patriot Guard Riders story (and the other side to my story) . I think it deserves to be up front.

I was one of the Patriot Guard Riders who was invited to attend the service for Mr. Rattray. Yes, it Was a very cold and rainy day, but what we went through is nothing compared to what our Soldiers both past and present go through to assure us of the Freedoms we all enjoy today and hopefully tomorrow.

I would like to thank you once again for allowing us the Honor to attend Mr. Rattray's service to show our Respect for him and his service for our Great Country.

Thank you for the kind words about the Patriot Guard Riders and No we won't bite you lol but we Do believe in showing those who have passed and those who have not, that have given us the Freedoms we all enjoy the HONOR and RESPECT each and everyone of them deserve.

Thank you also for the great meal, it kept me warm for my 80 mile ride home (yes it was still cold and raining) but no where near the warmth I get from being able to do what we do!

God Bless America, and may God Bless us one and all!

Kelly Mason aka Hollywood
Senior Ride Captain for the
S.E Texas Patriot Guard Riders

Patriot Guard Riders

Brothers, this little story is not strictly about Freemasonry, however it is one I think you should read.

“Aw poop” (or something like that), I mumbled as I drove into a parking space in front of the Cannon Funeral Home. It was Saturday morning April 7 and I was there for Brother David M. Rattray’s memorial service. Brother Rattray was a long time member of Waller Masonic Lodge #808 AF & AM. He had been a Mason for 32 years, a 32 degree Scottish Rite, a Shriner, an ex-marine and a member of the Waller Chapter of the VFW.

The temperature was in the 40s and it was drizzling rain, but the circular drive in front of the building was full of motorcycles and a bunch of scruffy looking men dressed in blue denim, black leather jackets and some also wore black leather chaps. Many of them had tattoos, ear rings, bushy beards, full mustaches and white hair and you probably wouldn’t have stopped at a bar where they were congregated. These men were lined up along the circular drive way and the main thing I noticed was that every one of them was holding an 8 foot flagpole with a big American flag. Then I remembered, I had seen them before on TV. They ride with the funerals for the fallen men and women of the U.S. Armed Services

After the service they lined up at attention with their flags on each side as Brother Rattray’s remains were carried from the funeral home and then accompanied them to the Waller cemetery.

By the time everyone got back to Waller Lodge dinning room and a huge table full of some good homemade food I had figured out who they were and why they were there. I made it a point to shake their hands, get to know them a little and personally thank them for what they were doing. I discovered that when requested they do this for fallen service personnel and veterans all over Texas and even into Louisiana

After I got home I looked them up on the internet and found the Patriot Guard Riders Web Site. I think their mission statement tells the whole story;

“The Patriot Guard Riders is a diverse amalgamation of riders from across the nation. We have one thing in common besides motorcycles. We have an unwavering respect for those who risk their very lives for America’s freedom and security.

We don’t care what you ride or if you ride, what your political views are, or whether you’re a hawk or a dove. It is not a requirement that you be a veteran. It doesn't matter where you’re from or what your income is; you don’t even have to ride. The only prerequisite is Respect.

Our main mission is to attend the funeral services of fallen American heroes as invited guests of the family.

Each mission we undertake has two basic objectives.

1. Show our sincere respect for our fallen heroes, their families, and their communities.

2. Shield the mourning family and their friends from interruptions created by any protester or group of protesters.

We accomplish the latter through strictly legal and non-violent means.

To those of you who are currently serving and fighting for the freedoms of others, at home and abroad, please know that we are backing you. We honor and support you with every mission we carry out, and we are praying for a safe return home for all.

I would advise everyone to never say anything detrimental to our troops or unpatriotic in front of them. Everyone of these fellers are some kind of serious patriots and it makes me feel good to know them better.

Are New Approaches A Cure Or A Complication

I received an email from a friend the other day stating that I hadn’t posted anything in the past 6 weeks and asking if I was OK. A small part of my answer was that I had discussed most of my major pet peeves and my fires had cooled a little.

However, I do still have a little problem with what seems to be frantic attempts by many Lodges and Grand Lodges in the U.S. and England to try almost anything to reverse Freemasonry’s losses in membership.

Anyone who tries to keep up with Masonic news reads more and more articles like the excerpts below.

“Petersfield Freemasons invited the town to an open day as they continue to throw off their cloak of secrecy.”

“…the Masons are giving public tours of the New York Grand Lodge Headquarters.” The lodge also hired a public relations firm to spread the word about its 225th anniversary, which was last month. And the Masons have run advertisements in movie theaters and run one-day classes to award the first three Masonic degrees in a single session”.

“Several jurisdictions, including those in Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, Oklahoma, and Washington, D.C., have greatly streamlined the initiation process. They have introduced one-day programs through which men can perform the necessary rituals to become "Master Masons" in a single day, rather than over several months.”

“In a long-in-the-tooth corner of downtown Dallas, between the Farmers Market and the Stewpot, sits the solid, well-maintained – but largely vacant – Masonic Temple.”

“With lodges now offering tours to the general public (one even asked me to lunch) and the wording of Masonic ceremonies available for anyone to buy, he may be right. But, dare I say, the more like the Rotary Club the Masons become, the less intriguing it all seems.”

Many of us old timers are troubled by the trend to offer inducements and shortcuts to anyone who will join the ranks. The main question they are asking is, is adding hundreds of new members to Freemasonry in one day progress for the fraternity or an progress for the coffers of the local blue Lodges and Grand Lodges.

When you read the article “Freemasonry in France” by Michael L. Segall, it makes you wonder about the new trend to modernize Freemasonry in order to attract the modern man. Is modernization really a cure for Masonries problems are in the long run adding to it’s problems.

According to Brother Segall’s article, Freemasonry in France is more popular then ever and gaining members. It appears that their secret is, that French Freemasonry today is the same as French Freemasonry over a hundred years ago.

For instance, the opening paragraphs in the article state.

“At my grand lodge (France) we are doubling our membership every dozen years or so, and have never simplified nor reduced the ritual to cater to candidates. Actually, it's unchanged since we removed "Long Live .the King!" more than a century ago. We've kept our old obligations and penalties, and if some outsider wants to misinterpret them, it's his problem”.

“Masonic education is at an extremely high level which, I'm afraid, could hardly be imagined elsewhere. Becoming a Mason is a challenge and a sought-after achievement, worth quite a few sacrifices. Our main problem is building enough lodge rooms. Our current ones are filled every day of the week by meeting lodges.”

“We have done for nearly three centuries the opposite of what is currently attempted in the USA, and we've done it with great success. Here is the recipe of the Grand Lodge of France where, it should be added, attendance in lodge is about 70 percent of members at every meeting.”

One of Brother Segall’s main reasons for their success is a problem that many of us here have been concerned about for a long time. I have long maintained that a key cause of dropouts after a man goes through the Entered Apprentice or Fellowcraft degree is that he is told, now you are a Mason, except you cannot participate in 95% of the Lodge meetings. It’s like he is in a Masonic Limbo. He’s paid his money (degree fee), went through a ceremony in which he really didn’t understand what was happening or why and still knows nothing about what goes on in the Lodge meeting until after he learns the work for the E.A. degree, passes to the Fellowcraft degree and learns the work for that degree and then raised to the Master Mason Degree.

I still remember my own E.A. and Fellowcraft periods (only 15 years ago when I was 64 years old) and the feelings that I was still an outsider. I had joined a Lodge in another town, where my son was the only member I knew for many months. If it hadn’t made him so happy that I had taken the big step and his constant encouragement, I’m not sure if I would have kept coming back. The French however understood that problem and prevented it from allowing it to be a problem.

“Unlike the USA where, since the Morgan affair, lodges meet in the third degree, our lodges open and do most of their business (except passings and raisings) in the Entered Apprentice degree.”

“This allows entered apprentices to attend lodge from day one. It eliminates any need to hurriedly pass and raise them so they don't disappear before they may attend Lodge.”

Regarding Brother Segall’s claim of 70% attendance at meetings, there is another big difference between the French and English (U.S.) approach that explains the French success while most U.S. Lodge’s have an average attendance of ten to twenty percent of the membership.

“Our obligations include the promise to regularly attend meetings, with rare exceptions (illness, travel, professional, or family obligations), and then a written excuse (or phones to the lodge master) is required. Insofar as ritual is concerned, we do not think there is any need to modify it to suit the changing winds of modernity or political correctness (which is only a minor issue here)~ Those who do not like our penal clauses, rituals, proficiency, Masonic education, customs, or traditions don't have to become Masons.”

“We never have mass initiations or "zoom" degrees, where no one really gets initiated, or degrees performed by professional teams. We make all initiations, passings, and raisings personal warm experiences: of fraternity and brotherly love, performed by the officers of the lodge. We allow, no more than five candidates per ceremony as required by Anderson's Constitutions, so that the new members never forget the experience and its meaning.”

There also appears to be a difference in the basic approach to Freemasonry.

“. . . Selection is very strict, and becoming a Masons is considered a challenge and an achievement for which many applicants well wait months or years and make quite a few sacrifices. Dues are, on the average $350 yearly About a third to half of applicants are refused.”

“We consider that Masonry is the means to make good men, better. All other purposes, developments, and results are simple consequences of this main goal. To this end it is obvious that only men who we consider capable of improving themselves are admitted. We are not interested in numbers but quality.”

I would not try to convince anyone that French Freemasonry is better or worse then English/US Freemasonry. However It does appear that it may be to our advantage to at least study the success.

For instance, it could definitely be to our advantage to make a couple of reasonably small changes in the status of E.A.s and Fellowcrafts. Either open all Lodge meetings in the E.A. degree except passings and raisings.

I think a better alternative would be the one proposed at the Texas Grand Lodge last year. Allow E.A.s and Fellowcrafts to attend Lodges opened in the Master Mason degree except during passings and raisings. However they would be nonvoting members and ineligible to hold an office until they have been raised as Master Masons. This would allow them to be involved with most Lodge activities and partake in day to day affairs.

I remember when my son in law, filled with expectations after months of work and study, was raised and attended his first stated meeting. On the way home, he turned to me and ask, “Is that all we do at Lodge meetings, talk about who’s sick and who died and how much the light bill cost this month.”

I’ll agree it was an exceptionally dull meeting that night, but if he had been attending meetings all those months he would have had a completely different view of Masonry and that meeting wouldn’t have been a let down.

Babies. Bathwater and Freemasonry

By James T. Moore

You know the routine. Lump all the negative influences in your life together, and then, without bothering to analyze them too critically, throw them all out, because you deem them "detrimental to your well-being." As many may well be.

So it is with the list of bizarre organizations and secret gatherings of like-minded individuals, sometimes called cults. Such as---and these are just a few—the Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, Bilderberg Group, Club of Rome, and the Illuminati. The Council of Foreign Relations, and the Tri-Lateral Commission also qualify if secrecy is the predominant criteria

Notice that one, so-called “secret” organization, was not mentioned: Freemasonry. Why was Freemasonry omitted from the list? Because of all the dark and obtuse organizations which I consider the “bath water”, I have a gnawing suspicion that Freemasonry may be the “baby” we are thoughtlessly throwing out with it.

There are good reasons for my thinking so. And if you’ll bear with me, I’ll try to explain.

Unlike, for example, Skull and Bones, an ultra-secret society in which occult traditions, secret oaths, and pagan rituals are the norm--- and in which many prominent families (including the Bushes) send their sons to Yale to become Bonesmen--- Freemasonry is neither pagan, occult, nor elitist. But it IS secret, for an honest and logical reason.

Before we discuss that reason, and the tenets of Freemasonry further, I confess an association with the Masonic Order earlier in my life, and my subsequent resignation from the organization---simply because I soon discovered that I am not an “organization” type person; a “joiner” by nature. Thus, anything further I have to say about Freemasonry is as objective and free of judgment as I can make it.

That Freemasonry has historical ties to Biblical teachings is beyond question, because it is provable. Out of the Dark Ages, both the Bible and Freemasonry emerged in England and Europe when the public weal finally had access to writings which previously could be passed along only by word of mouth.

Calling Freemasonry a “religious” organization, however, is not accurate. It can best be described as specialized physical “work” with deep spiritual overtones.

In the Middle Ages, the word mason was used to denote a builder. That is, one of the many artisans in crafts and trades connected with architectural construction; such as men who worked in stone, bricks and tiles. But there were many grades of craftsmen, and many kinds of special talents. In Gothic construction of cathedrals and other monumental architectural marvels, the work of Master Freemasons, was equal to Greek architecture, but never surpassed.

Eventually these disparate, but related, crafts organized themselves into gilds, or fraternities, each having its own rules, regulations, memberships, trained apprentices, AND a monopoly on its own kind of Masonry. This is important to know, because it is this monopoly, this professional secrecy about the “tricks of their trade” which has given Freemasonry an air of mysticism, occultism, even paganism, however inaccurate and undeserved it may be.

The understandable reticence to give away the “secrets” of their trade exists with professional artisans and craftsmen to this very day. My Uncle Bob, now deceased, was a cabinet maker whose work exemplified what true craftsmanship is all about. I have a chessboard, with squares of oak, maple, and walnut, which Uncle Bob made nearly 70 yeas ago, and it is in my office, still in beautiful condition.

Some accuse Freemasonry of being a black art or a heathen cult. A curious accusation since history shows it to be one of the most respected and honored of the ancient crafts; that Masons were honorable and lawful men, and that their craft had been practiced, honored, or established by such great men as David, Solomon, Euclid, and Pythagoras.

Oddly enough, Biblical elements came into the craft, not directly, but in a roundabout way. And not as history or theology, but as data to show that the great art of architecture had been known and practiced as far back as the prophets and kings of the Old Testament. And although occultism and mysticism flourished back then, and through the Middle Ages, Freemasonry was solely identified as the art of the builder, designer, and engineer, and had no interest in either occultism or mysticism.

Since time immemorial, Freemason philosophy is that work comes from God, for He Himself, as the Sovereign Grand Architect of the Universe, is a worker.

Pretty heady stuff, I admit, but the rationale for that statement is the great equalizer. God so made the world that plants do not grow ready to eat, clothing is not made by sheep, leather is not shoes, and houses do not build themselves.

Work, then, is universal, and a way of life. To be a worker is to be a man, and where idleness is praised, men deteriorate. It is in work that man discovers himself, reaches his stature, and becomes what God created him to be. That’s why Masons never refer to their activities as meetings, occupations, sessions or rituals; it is always referred to as Work.

Moreover each Masonic station, degree, pillar, column, and allusion are all symbolic of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, and, to put it bluntly, are no less meaningful than Jesus on the dashboard of your car, a candle on the altar in your synagogue, or a cross on the steeple of your church.

So, before you throw out the bath water, it might be wise to make sure that the baby is no longer in it.

Kind permission to reprint “Babies. Bathwater and Freemasonry” was given by the author, James T. Moore. You may read it and many other interesting pieces by him on The American Daily at http://www.americandaily.com/

Brothers, as it says at the top of this BLOG, it’s purpose is not to change anyone’s mind, but to make you think. Judging from the comments, it has served that purpose.

I could post stories here all day long that exactly agrees with your beliefs and mine, however parroting our versions of events over and over does nothing to increase our knowledge or understanding.

It is my belief (right or wrong) that we must listen to other peoples views and thoughts, whether we agree with them or not, in order to increase our own knowledge.

Knowledge Is Power

Freemasonry And Society

By V. Rev. Keith Jones

[Reprinted with the gracious permission of the author. This was an address presented to a choral evensong for Suffolk Masons at St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.]

I am not a Freemason. I therefore speak to you with respect and gratitude from outside. I habitually answer those who are critical of Freemasons that, as a rule, we should judge every organization by the best we find in it, and not the worst.

The best defense of the Masonic tradition is the people whom I have known, loved and respected, who have been Freemasons. They number, for example, an uncle, my loved parish priest, Bishop Edmund Sara, Dean Peter Moore of St Albans, who has just died, among many others.

You cherish long and intricate pedigrees to very ancient foundations in human civilization. The real history of your movement, where it emerges as an important force in British life, strikes me is magnificently 18th century, the age of common humanity and the Rights of Man.

The sort of people who came together to found Lodges were typically middling people. Oliver Goldsmith remarked in the middle of the century that there were so many middling people, neither very grand nor very humble, while on the continent the classes were too polarized.

That some Lodges are very grand indeed does not undermine the fact. The freedom to associate, to combine for the purposes of Lodge activities and charitable purposes, was one of the symptoms of social health in 18th century Suffolk and one of the means whereby the country was maintained in peace.

The Masonic system has made people feel they belonged. It has encouraged friendship, and so overcome the curse of loneliness which stifles so much good in people. The Lodge provides, if I am not mistaken, the place where the lines of W H Auden are shown as true:

Private faces in public places are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places Then again, the Lodges of 18th century England were godly without being sectarian.

The importance of that can hardly be exaggerated. When we consider the violence of religious quarrel in the 17th century, the century of the Civil War and the struggle of the religious sects, it is amazing that in the Masonic Lodges, dissenter and Church of England men sat down and were brothers together. What was the secret?

It was that in all classes of society, people were coming to believe in common humanity, mankind. They were moved by what people had in common rather than in what history had brought to pass. Now, the idea of human rights and human dignity have become a cliché, so that we forget what a new idea this was in 1730.

But it was in England, influenced by the writings of John Locke, that men and women first felt their liberties and civil decency were no more and no less than merely human. By our standards their world was unbelievably coarse and class-ridden, but the founding of Masonic Lodges was a means whereby they showed how moved they were by these new ideas and ideals. They insisted on good behavior.

In the By-Laws of the Lodge of Antiquity No. 2 (the old Lodge of St Paul’s), printed in 1760, there is the following rule:

If any Brother Curses, Swears or says anything Irreligious, Obscene or Ludicrous, Holds private Committees, Disputes about Religion or Politics, offers to lay Wagers, or is disguised in Liquor during the Lodge hours such offending Brother shall be immediately fined by a private Ballot for each offence … each fine not to be under one shilling nor to exceed Five Shillings.

(It also appeared in the Masonic Quarterly Magazine the official publication of the United Grand Lodge of England in Issue 19, October 2006. http://www.mqmagazine.co.uk/)

A Secret Society?

I was reading the article, “The Eye in the Pyramid ”, by Brother S. Brent Morris, P.M. that started out by stating,

“Historians must be cautious about many well-known “facts.” George Washington chopped down a cherry tree when a boy and confessed the deed to his father. Abner Doubleday invented the game of baseball. Freemasons inserted some of their emblems (chief among them the eye in the pyramid) into the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States. These historical “facts” are widely popular, commonly accepted, and equally false.”

Then I read in James Barron’s article entitled “A Secret Society, Spilling a Few Secrets,” he states in what to me, seems an accusatory manner,

“For more than two centuries, the Freemasons and their grandiose rituals have played a secretive, mysterious role in American life. One of the Masons' symbols looks a lot like the all-seeing eye on the back of every $1 bill. And look whose picture is on the other side.”

If Masons put Masons pictures and Masonic symbols on the money that every citizen in the country handles every day, they aren’t being very secretive are they? If Masons include a Masonic symbol in the street design of the Washington, D.C., they aren’t being very secretive are they?

Yes, the intersections of Massachusetts Ave., Road Island Ave., Connecticut Ave., Vermont Ave. and K Street NW form a five pointed star. It is also true that many of the city’s architects in the nineteenth and early twentieth century were freemasons. From these two facts, and a vivid imagination, many writers have concluded that the city was intentionally planned to promote an occult agenda.

In the first place, the pentagram or five pointed star has never been associated with the Masonic Lodge. And yes, the female organization for relatives of Masons, the Order Of The Eastern Star, uses the five pointed star as their symbol. However, the Eastern Star was founded by Dr. Robert Morris in 1849/50 and the street plan for Washington, D.C. had been designed 60 years earlier in 1791. So, it should be obvious, even to anti-Masons, that the street plan of Washington, D.C. has no connection to the Freemasons.

George Washington, a Freemason, did commission Pierre Charles L'Enfant and approved the street plan drawn up by Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Bannaker who were not freemasons. And, contrarily to anti-Mason claims, there is no indication that Charles L'Enfant was a Freemason and in his obituary, published in the June 25, 1825 edition of the National Intelligencer there was no mention that he was a freemason. Actually. although L'Enfant was hired by George Washington most of his relationship with the goverment went through Thomas Jefferson who drew the original street plan that L'Enfant and company worked from to draw the street plan.

OK, so George Washington was a Freemason and his picture is on the dollar bill. He was probably the foremost leader in gaining independence from England and forming the United States of America that we have now. He was the General who led the Continental Army to defeat the British and win independence for the new country. He turned down the offer to crown him as the King for life and instead served an elected term as the first President.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that the country he helped bring into existence would want to honor him in many ways for his accomplishments? But if you think having a Freemason’s picture on a dollar bill is such a bad thing, Abraham Lincoln’s picture is on the $5.00 bill and Alexander Hamilton’s picture is on the $10 dollar bill and neither of them were Freemasons. Maybe two non-Masons on commonly used bills will cancel out the Masonic influence of George Washington having his image on the dollar bill.

Does that theory sound ridiculous? Of course it does and so does the idea that Washington’s picture being on the dollar bill means that the United States is being run by the Freemasons. George Washington’s life and his writings are ample proof that he was a Christian, so why wouldn’t the United States have been formed by Christians rather then Freemasons.

Regarding the eye in the triangle above the pyramid, the words are the Latin words "Annuit Coeptis." This translates to "He has favored our undertakings." This line is associated with the "Eye of Providence" which has absolutely nothing to do with Freemasonry.

The first known use of an “All Seeing Eye” or “Eye Of Providence” as it is also called, can be traced back to Egyptian mythology and the Eye of Horus. In the 17th-century the Eye of Providence is sometimes shown surrounded by clouds. The later addition of an enclosing triangle is usually seen as a more explicit Trinitarian reference to the God of Christianity.

Could it be that the eye in a triangle on the dollar bill is the Christian symbol rather than a Masonic one? After all, almost all members of the new government were Christians and only a few were Masons. What a blow to the Christian Masonic conspiracy advocates.

The Vietnamese religion Cao Dai, as well as a number of other churches, uses the Eye of Providence (specifically, the left eye) within a triangle is used to represent God. According to some UFO witnesses, there have been several sightings of Men in Black wearing a symbol resembling the Eye in the Pyramid. It was also used as a symbol on Ukrainian 500 Hryvnia bill. In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is described as having an all-seeing eye.

On Independence Day in 1776 three men, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, along with Pierre Eugene du Simitière as a consultant and artist were formed as a committee to create a great seal for the new government of the United States of America. Only Benjamin Franklin of these four men was a Mason, and he contributed nothing of a Masonic nature to the committee’s proposed design for a seal. Du Simitière, the committee’s consultant and a non-Mason, contributed the ideas of using the shield, the slogan, E Pluribus Unum, the date, MDCCLXXVI, and the eye of providence in a triangle (a Christian symbol).

The Eye on the great seal is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God, favors the prosperity of the United States which has nothing to do with Freemasonry. The first Masonic reference to the Eye of Providence is in “The Freemasons Monitor” by Thomas Smith Webb, published in 1797, some 30 years after the Great Seal was designed and the Masonic use of the Eye has never incorporated a pyramid.

So much for Freemasonry and secret Masonic symbols having an influence on the present form of the United States government.

I would have to close with the thought that if Masonic plan is to rule the government, their plan must be one of the biggest failures in history. After all they have had 230 years to do it.

Masonry, Proven Not A Valid Religion

From, THE CHARACTER, CLAIMS AND PRACTICAL WORKINGS OF FREEMASONRY
1869 By Rev. C. G. FINNEY - CHAPTER XV. - FREEMASONRY IS A FALSE RELIGION.

“This brings me to the third inquiry: Are the claims that Masonry is a true and saving religion valid? To this question I reply that it is utterly false;”

“The third question proposed for discussion in my last number is: Are the claims of Masonry to be a true and saving institution valid? To this I answer, No.”

“They do, indeed, promise to assist each other in distress, and to help each other's families, provided they fall into poverty. But on what condition do they promise this? Why, that a certain amount is to be paid into their treasury as a fund for this purpose. But this, surely, is not benevolence, but the simple payment of a debt, on the principle of mutual insurance.” [This proves Masonry is not a religion(?). The only money a Mason pays the Lodge is the annual dues, which are used to pay the operating expenses of the Lodge.]

“. . . Again, the motives presented in Freemasonry to secure the course of action to which they are pledged are by no means consistent with the law or the Gospel of God.”

“. . . The motive urged by Masons is, to honor Masonry, to honor the institution, to honor each other. While they are pledged to assist each other in distress; to keep each other's secrets, even if they be crimes; and to aid each other, whether right or wrong, so far as to extricate them from any difficulty in which they are involved; yet they never present the pure motives of the Gospel. They are pledged not to violate the chastity of a brother Mason's wife, sister, daughter, or mother; but they are not pledged by Masonry, as the law and Gospel of God require, to abstain from such conduct with any female whatever. But nothing short of universal benevolence, and universal morality, is acceptable to God.” [Again, the good Rev. C. G. Finney proves Masonry is not a religion.]

“. . . It also professes to be entirely consistent with the Christian religion. And this it does while it embraces as good and acceptable Masons hundreds of thousands who abhor Christianity, and scoff at the Bible and everything that the Bible regards as sacred. In a Christian nation it professes to receive Christianity as a true religion; in Mohammedan countries it receives the Koran as teaching the true religion; in heathen countries it receives their sacred books as of as much authority as that which is claimed in Christian countries for the Bible. In short, Freemasonry in a pagan country is pagan, in a Mohammedan country it is Mohammedan, and in a Christian country it professes to be Christian; but in this profession it is not only grossly inconsistent, but intensely hypocritical.” [Once again, the good Rev. C. G. Finney proves the Masons point. Masonry is not a religion, but a group of religious men that includes men of other faiths.]