# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 Proceedings of the twentieth convention

When St. Paul's Cathedral in London was being built, non-craftsmen, and mostly scholars, first joined this league, and the old brotherhood received through the influence of these people a significant, decisive transformation. They resolved outright to convert operative masonry into speculative [literally "spiritual"] masonry. This was in the 17th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, about 1717, the new organization in cultus and constitution was undertaken. A preacher, a natural scientist and an antiquarian were the directors of the work. — It was in this period that in England Deism in the proper sense exercised an effect that positively made an epoch. Now it said in the new regulations of the lodge that members are to be obligated only to that religion in which all men agree, that is, they are to be good and true men, men of honor and probity, by whatever denominations and creeds they may be distinguished. The lodge thus does not wish to take his religion from the individual member, but wishes to let him find in the lodge so much and such religion as he can assent to with his religion, which he has. By entering into the teachings of Deism, which then flourished, this seemed possible, especially when one considered how Deism stood toward the Bible and toward Christianity as against natural morality and religion.

So the fundamental ideas of the lodge, as the Freemasons express them when they say: "to establish true friendship among persons who would otherwise have had to remain in constant distance from one another," are built on deistic principles and, as demonstrable historically, are to be ascribed to deistic influences.

How much of this has passed, consciously or unconsciously, to all the many sons and daughters of the Freemason league cannot be established. But it is found in all lodges. And one may confidently say of all lodges: they have a false religion [*Afterreligion*], they are Deists.

If one wished to say of the lodges that it is their purpose to cultivate Deism, one would do them (excepting the Freemasons and Odd Fellows) an injustice. It is for them only a means to an end, according as the people whom they would like to get into their membership are to be attracted or not frightened off. Of such a religion, therefore, finally the same holds as must be said of secrecy: it is speculation. The lodges want to meet the religious need that lies in every man and that finally no one can wholly deny, and indeed in a way that, in their opinion, opposes no particular religious tendency. If they wanted to build up a religion of their own, they would have to demand of their members withdrawal from their former communions, which they do not do, as experience also teaches that the lodge people in great crowds belong to the sectarian churches and cannot or will not understand the stand taken by the Lutheran and Catholic church against the lodge system. Nevertheless, even if the lodges are not representatives of a