The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1922, Page 18

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18 The Lutheran Pioneer.

SS ————————_——___—__ EEE

2,10. But, of course, these works are not the cause
of our salvation, they are the fruit of faith and the
expression of a grateful heart that knows that its
salvation is an accomplished fact. The man that is
upon the right way to heaven makes the words of
old Toplady his own: —

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfil Thy Law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the Fountain fly:

Wash me, Savior, or I die!

Yes, indeed, we are saved, says God’s Word, not
by the works of the Law, but alone by grace, for
Christ’s sake, through faith. And so the Church,
your Church, teaches.

But what does the lodge say on this point? The
lodges all, without exception, teach a different way

“of salvation. Not one of them knows anything
about repentance; not one of them speaks of real
regeneration or conversion; not one of them recog-
nizes the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ. Paul
tells us that the Scriptures were given to make us
wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
2 Tim. 3,15. But this wisdom which the Scriptures
would teach us is foolishness in the eyes of the
lodge. Scripture says, “Not by works”; the lodge
says, “By works” are you saved. Scripture says,
“Faith in Christ saves”; the lodge says, “No; faith
in Christ avails naught.” ‘The two are to one an-
other like fire and water; they cannot agree.

That this is actually so you may judge for your-
selves from the following quotations taken from the
books of various secret societies. “It [Masonry]
inculcates the practise of virtue, but it supplies no
scheme of redemption for sin,’ says Mackey, the
great Masonic authority, in his Lexicon, page 641.
And on page 450 of the same book he writes: “It
is the object of the speculative Mason, by a uniform
tenor of virtuous conduct, to receive, when his al-
lotted ‘course of life is passed, the tmappreciable
reward, from his Celestial Grand Master, of ‘Well
done, thou good and faithful servant.?” In his
Encyclopedia the same authority writes, on page
210, that all definitions of Freemasonry “unite in-
declaring it to be a system of morality, by the prac-
tise of which tts members may advance their sptr-

ilual interest, and mount by the theological ladder
from the Lodge on earth to the Lodge in heaven.”
Surely that is making plain that Freemasonry
teaches salvation by works! ;

Grosh says in his New Odd-Fellows’ Manual,
1882, on page 100: “What regeneration by the
word of truth is in religion, initiation is in Odd-
Fellowship.” On page 107 he says: “Friendship,
Love, and Truth are not only a safeguard, but a
remedy for all the social and moral evils that afflict
our race.” On page 379 Grosh declares that works
like visiting the sick and the like are “the rounds
of that ladder by which it [Odd-Fellowship] would
have ils volaries rise to yet higher planes of virtue
and excellence,” and mentions as the great aim of
Odd-Fellowship “to lead man to the cultivation of
his true fraternal relations designed by the Great
Author of his being.” By good works, Grosh says
on page 93 of the same book, “we aim to improve
and exalt the character of our members.” All this,
in plain language, means that Odd-Fellowship ex-
pects to save its members by their good works.

At a convention held in Los Angeles last No-
vember, William Mountain, the new Grand Exalted
Ruler of the Order of Elks, in his official address
said the following: “We do not want to make a
church*of it [the Elk Order], we don’t want to
preach sermons; but, my brothers and friends, the
only thing God ever asked us to do was, not to pray,
to join a church, or to give our money, but to give
ourselves to every fellow who needs us, and to the
one who needs us most, to him we owe the most;
and it is only inasmuch as we obey this injunclion
that we can square our own account with the Real
Boss.’ (By Real Boss he means God!) ‘There is
certainly no mistaking that the Elks want to go to
heaven by their works, and that they know nothing
of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

The official Woodman’s Handbook of the Modern
Woodmen of ‘America has on page 315: “It may be
when mortals are called into the presence of the
Judge, from whose decree there is no appeal, that
the sentence of condemnation may not be passed on
the weaknesses of mankind, except as they are un-
redeemed by the virtues of life.’ In their “Opening
Ode No. 2” they sing: “Work we will! Our cause
is just, charity our hope and trust.” Morris Shep-
pard, leading writer of the Woodmen of the World,
says on page 84 of his Fraternal and Other Ad-
dresses: “The man and woman in the humblest
sphere may through the influence of some sacrifice
or thought or deed begin an existence after death.”