The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1922, Page 2

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2 The Lutheran Pioneer.

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The Church and the Lodge.

IV.

The Church of Christ teaches in accordance
with God’s Word that: all men are lost and con-
demned sinners, who, though they be ever so re-
spectable and honorable in the sight of their fellow-
men, are forever lost and damned outside of Christ,
the only Savior of mankind.

The utter depravity of man’s nature and his in-
clination to all that is evil, as also his inability to
do aught that is good in the sight of God, is a plain
teaching of Scripture. Christ told Nicodemus in
that memorable interview which He had with him:
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” John 3, 6.
Gen. 6, 5 is recorded an awful indictment against
the whole human family: “And God saw that the
_ wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of his heart was only evil con-
tinually.” Speaking of the natural, unconverted
man, Paul writes: “The carnal mind is enmity
against God; for it is not subject to the Law of God,
neither indeed can be.” Rom. 8,6. And Rom. 7, 18
the same apostle declares: “I know that in me, that
is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.”

That because of this depravity man is a lost and
condemned creature the Bible teaches just as plainly
as it does his utter sinfulness. “We were by nature
the children of wrath, even as others,” Paul writes
to the Ephesians. “The soul that sinneth, it shall
die,” is the irrevocable decree pronounced by a holy
and just God upon all men.

Over against this plain teaching of the Church
as to man’s utter depravity and her teaching that
man’s sinfulness deserves God’s wrath and dis-
pleasure, temporal death, and eternal damnation,
a teaching which is in absolute agreement with the
Bible, the lodge teaches the very contrary. The
lodge denies man’s total depravity and claims that
there is some moral good in everybody. Its position
is that a little enlightenment and education in virtue
will bring out the good that lies dormant in every
soul. In the Odd-Fellows’ Text-book, p. 146, it is
' said, in direct contradiction to Scripture, that every

man, no matter where he is, nor what station in life .

he may occupy, bears the image of his Maker. All
that the lodge admits is that man is fettered by the
bonds of ignorance, error, and superstition; but the
assertion is made that he can emancipate himself
and gradually progress toward perfect truth. At the
hottom of their hearts all men are naturally good,

says the lodge, and if properly enlightened and
educated, they will come to realize their moral worth
and make proper use of their rights and privileges.
That the natural man should be the child of the
devil, 1 John 3,10, and that the whole world lieth
in wickedness, 1 John 5, 19, the lodge simply denies.
The Woodman’s Handbook, compiled by W. A.
Northcott, Head Consul M. W. A., 1894, declares on
page XXXII that the longing and desire of man is
directed toward moral purity. And on page XXII,
Selected Lileralure, also a publication of the Modern
Woodmen of America, we read: “The consuming
desire of man is purity.”

And as the lodge teaches that man is not morally
depraved by nature, so it also refuses to acknowledge
that the wrath of God is resting upon man because
of his sins. Sickness and pain, sorrow and distress,
destruction and death, the lodge does not regard as
the consequences of sin, but as crosses and trials
which man must bear innocently. In_ passing
through these distressing experiences, man is play-
ing the réle of a martyr, and far from being a chas-
tisement for sin, such a martyrdom will merit for
man a reward from a just God, if not in this life,
then surely in the life to come, where “eternal joy
will dispel the ephemeral sorrow of this short and
troublesome existence,” and where “he shall live in
the eternal glories of his-Maker.” (Official Ritual
Modern Woodmen of America, pp. 7+. 77.)

Now hold the teachings of the Church and the
lodge on this point up against one another: ‘The
lodge teaches that all men are naturally good; the
Church holds that all men are born in sin. ‘The
lodge holds that man is not a condemned sinner by
nature; the Church teaches that by nature every
man lies under the just judgment of an angry, but
just God. Who is right, the lodge or the Church?
Who agrees with the Bible? Surely the Church.

Let us, then, turn away from the false and dan-
gerous teachings of the lodge to the teachings of the
Church, confess and lament our sins, and sincerely
pray, “God, be merciful to me a sinner, for Jesus’,
my Savior’s, sake !” F. J. U.

Alabama Notes.

Twenty-six miles north of Montgomery and lo-
cated on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad is a little
railway station — Joffre. This little country rail-
way station is no different from the thousands
of other similar stations scattered throughout the