# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S33
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1904. 33

stricted). Should not everyone willingly do his part for so important and high a purpose? (Here the high purpose, to help others, is named immediately afterward together with the purpose of obtaining help oneself, as the driving cause.) By helping others he finds help himself. (An echo of the scriptural saying: "Give, and it shall be given unto you": there a divine promise, in which we are to take comfort when we give away to the needy and see nothing more for ourselves before our eyes, here a claim justified by a business arrangement. That such teachings are no ennobling of the character, no inner progress, need not first be said.)

Divisions, of whatever kind they may be, we do not know; quarrel and envy, hatred and strife we combat (here morality is taught and preached, the exercise of a moral education by the lodge is established, moral life demanded, the promise given and sealed by the "we do not know" to contribute to the removal of such things as disturb earthly happiness), and arising discords are settled according to principles of humanity (probably either according to generally recognized ones or according to such as the lodge sets for itself, at any rate not according to Scripture) by ourselves (the "by ourselves," and with it the "envy" listed above, indicate how far the lodge extends its educational activity).

Through friendship begotten [*gezeugte*] by mutual, free and equal right (brotherhood and the advantages bound up with it) (brotherhood thus the source), love engendered by benevolence (thus not that begotten by the Holy Spirit in those who believe in Christ), we fight together the battle of life, which loyalty makes easier for us through the never-failing sympathy (active love and help are limited; where they stop, empty sympathy sets in) of the brothers. (Thus again a pointer to the fact that brotherhood and what is bound up with it is to contribute to making life pleasant and easy.)

What can we now establish, on the basis of such utterances, as the real essence of the lodge system?

It is this: The lodges want to be institutes of moral education.

They demand morality.

They teach morality.

They found brotherhood on the basis of, and for the attainment of, the demanded and taught morality.

They promise, upon fulfillment of their morality, earthly happiness.

The lodges demand morality, but their morality is worth nothing. They call themselves benevolent institutions and give. Being charitable belongs to the realm of morality. How is their charity constituted? The poor and the sick are excluded. If someone can no longer pay, he is from the