# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Proceedings of the twentieth convention

what it can attain, must attain and does attain, is a lulled, deadened conscience, which no longer thinks of how to escape the future wrath of the great God.

Luther writes of such people: "Thus there are many, also finer, more honorable, learned and otherwise upright people who . . . remain all in the fabricated conscience. . . . For the cover is too beautiful and dazzles too much, so that no one may call them anything but upright and pious people. Thereupon in the end hardened hearts come out of it, which strengthen and harden themselves in the poisonous vice, and a sin against the Holy Spirit, . . . that it will not be sin nor evil, but shall be called a virtue. Which means striking God in the mouth and giving the lie to His Word." (St. Louis ed. VII, 436, 182.)

And yet in many lodges there are found the Bible and acts of worship: the Bible, which teaches Christ and puts eternal salvation above everything, which knows only the one chief concern, that of being saved; acts of worship that aim at union with God, fellowship with God, as the highest goal. How much there is to Bible and acts of worship, how their use is sheer abuse, how in the end everything is calculated only for time, how, despite the demanded belief in God and occasional thoughts of eternity, even where this happens, earthly happiness is above all and as the main thing in question, is stated quite clearly and plainly by the Freemasons, who, it is admitted, practice more religion than any other of the many lodges. The 33rd degree of Freemasonry contains the following utterances:

"Freemasonry does not require of us to tear our hearts loose from earthly life as an empty, fleeting, worthless thing, and to hang them on heaven as the only sphere worthy of the love of the lover and of the thinking of the thinker, the sage. Man is sent into this world not to sigh continually for another life, to dream of another life, to prepare himself for another life, but to do his duty and fulfill his destiny here on earth, to do all that lies in his power, to perfect it, to make it a place of happiness for himself, for humanity around and after him. His life here is a piece of his immortality; and this world also stands under the starry heavens. . . . The invisible can take no higher place in our wishes than the visible and familiar. The law of our existence is love of life and of that which makes it interesting and beautiful, love of the world, into which one of us is cast, linked with earthly interests and inclinations." ("Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and accepted Scottish rite of Freemasonry, prepared for the supreme council of the 33. degree, for the southern jurisdiction of the United States, and published by its Authority." Charleston, A. M. 5641.)