# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1904. 35

Christ, as the brothers call themselves who are one in faith, but they derive their brotherhood from the fact that all men have come forth from one Creator's hand. Now one might perhaps accept that, if someone on this ground wished to call all men brothers; one could accept it if there were not the brotherhood in Christ, the only true one, set up by God himself, to reunite the men likewise scattered and separated by himself through the Babylonian confusion. — One could accept it if the lodge connected quite other ideas with the word brother than we connect with it — one could accept it if the natural train of thought of man led him to regard his fellow men, one and all, as brothers. This, however, is not the case. The most highly educated people of all the heathen peoples, from whose midst the most important philosophers have come, the ancient Greeks, especially the Athenians, with all their philosophy never arrived at such a thought. They know only Hellenes. All other people are barbarians to them, and nothing links them with them.*) The idea of brotherhood is taken from Christianity, is stolen out of Scripture and planted on a different ground in the lodge. The brotherhood of the lodge is a caricature of true brotherhood. Of this also holds what Luther writes of the people who corrupt the Gospel: "For the Gospel must be everyman's doormat, that all the world run over it and tread on it with their feet."

Likewise there applies to the lodge people's brother-system, as well as their moral teaching and demanding, what Luther says on Matt. 7:23: "The ornament and fair cover is there, such a virtue as loves right and is angry against the evil and cannot bear it; as indeed the sword and authority is ordained for this, that it is to uphold justice and punish the evil; as also father and mother, lord or lady must be angry and punish. Then comes the pious rogue, hangs the same little cloak about him, says he does it out of love of justice and has right and fair cause for it . . ., and it is nevertheless at bottom nothing but a shameful, venomous hatred and grudge that cannot otherwise show and vent itself."

And now finally the promise of earthly happiness, which we find expressed again and again in the most various lodges. If we put this together with what was said before about morality, we must say: The lodge wants in a certain way the same as the church wants, only much less, and what it wants, and as it wants it, is perverse and unfeasible: a moral life without Christ, for time, which is to produce a contented mind and a happy heart. And

*) The natural man does not feel himself bound in brotherhood with all humanity. Circles, religion and race count with him. Here he joins together. From the whole he shuts himself off. There is much that separates him from many.