FREEMASONRY

-A

FOURFOLD CONSPIRACY.

ADDRESS OF

PREST. J. BLANCHARD,

BEFORE THE

EIGHTH ANNUAL CONVENTION

OF THE

National Christian Association

AT PITTSBURGH, PA.

June, 9th, 1875.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS:

EZRA A. COOK. PUBLISHER.

Freemasonry a Fourfold Conspiracy.

ADDRESS OF PRES'T J. BLANCHARD,

Before the Eighth Annual Convention of the National Christian Association at Pittsburgh, Pa., June 9, 1875.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of the National Christian Association, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

We have come back to this first home of our national organization, like glad children to their birth-place. We are met where, seven years since, we plighted faith to God and each other, to resist what we believed to be in its origin, and true nature, a fourfold conspiracy against our religion and our government, against God and the human race; a conspiracy not less, but far more fatal because secret; and so secret that thousands of well disposed men embarked in it "know not what they do," but are like the betrayers and crucifiers of old, blinded by personal and pecuniary ends, of whom it is written: Had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." Let us pause and review our ground. Let us re-examine our principles and our purposes: what we believe and what we hope to do.

It is easy to bring rhetorical indictments. But are not our fears exaggerated, and our conclusions groundless? If they are not, and if we can convince sober, thinking meu that they are not; if we persuade them that our country and religion are in actual, pressing danger; that, as has been well said, "Secret societies and the civil government are two masters whom no one man can serve;" then all good men will be with us. Surely they will be with us, if convinced that the dangers we denounce are real; that our principles are sound; our objects attainable; our aims just.

As to names and professions: we are Christians in religion; and in politics, Americans. In May, 1868, now seven years ago we voted to call ourselves a "Christian Association opposed to Secret Societies." In our incorporation, (April 19, 1874), we named ourselves simply "The National Christian Association," and put our object in our constitution. We hope to make it understood by the country and the world, that Christianity is opposition

to secret societies, unless it is spurious Christianity. For a like reason we voted last year at Syracuse (1874), to call ourselves in politics simply Americans; believing that the lodge extinguishes American principles, as the choke damp extinguishes light and life. Are we in error? Or are these doctrines true? The proof that lodge-masonry subverts Christianity are as numerous as the principles in the two systems.

Christianity places men in the church as equals in Christ. Masonry packs them in higher and lower degrees in the lodge. The law of Christ is a "perfect law of liberty," whose highest penalty is withdrawal of love and fellowship. The law of the lodge is unreasoning obedience, and its penalty, death. No appeal lies from a local lodge-master to his lodge; and their standard lexicon declares, "The edicts of a Grand Lodge must be obeyed without examination!" And men, freemen (!) submit to such laws, as burglars, bandits and brigands obey their laws, for the sake of the clan. The brotherhood of Christianity is based on regeneration and love: that of the lodge on oaths, imprecations and terror. Christianity, too, abolished the Jewish distinctions against women. The lodge retains and intensifies them. It swears its members never to initiate women. Then, also, Christ's Gospel is pre-eminently for the poor. But the lodge excludes the poor. It receives its members for money and drops them when they cease to pay.

Thus the lodge is anti-Christ in its spirit, constitution, laws, principle and forms. But the crowning proof of its fearful antagonism to Christ is, that while Christ commanded Christianity to be preached "in all the world," "to every creature," the lodge swears its members to "conceal" Masonry in all the world, from every creature but themselves, on pain of death by mangling and mutilation! So plain is it that the lodge, in theory at least, is death to the Christian religion. And its theory is the law of its practice.

The proofs of its antagonism to civil government and especially to our own, are equally plain. The theory of American politics is that, under God, the people are the source of power, and so "ordain" their own constitutions. Even in England, the mightiest and most stable of hereditary monarchies, the supreme power has again and again reverted to the people. This was the case when John granted the trial by jury; when Charles I. lost his head, and when James II. lost his three kingdoms.

But, in Masonry, the Grand Lodge, which consists of a few officials, is the source of power, and issues all local constitutions, called charters, which it can withdraw, erase or extinguish at its pleasure! And as those composing the Grand Lodge are known to comparatively few, the Masonic masses are, as a general rule, in the words of Robison, who had visited the leading lodges of the world, "underling adherents to unknown superiors." These statements rest on the authority of Chase, Mackey, Robison, Rebold, Arnold and other Masonic writers. And, taken thus from its own standards, there is not a completer despotism on earth, or one more utterly subversive of every American idea and principle, civil or religious.

But facts are more striking than principles. Does Freemasonry, it is asked, in fact destroy religion and government, and especially popular government? I need scarcely say that its history, as well as its theory and principles, charges the lodge with defiance and demolition of all law and all religion but its own.

William L. Marcy was appointed by the New York Legislature its Special Justice to try the Morgan murder cases. When he saw that grave, honored, respected citizens regarded falsehood and perjury as Masonic virtues if called for by the lodge, Judge Marcy exclaimed, from the bench, "If men will defy heaven and earth, what can human courts do?" And John C. Spencer, then first of living jurists, perhaps, who was special counsel and the assistant of the New York Executive in the same cases, in his letter resigning the office, charged the Governor himself with betraying his State in favor of the murderers of.Morgan! These, with multitudes of cases equally authentic, are but the lodge theory reduced to practice, viz: That no obligation, human or divine, is good or binding against the lodge. The late Hon. Gerrit Smith told us at Syracuse, that what chiefly shocked and roused the people after Morgan's death, was the discovery that law and government were virtually annihilated and dead before the lodge. I will add a single case more: It is the overthrow of the Commonwealth and the restoration of despotic government by accepted Masons in the local lodges of England on the death of Cromwell. I quote from "A General History of Freemasonry in Europe," by Emanuel Rebold. This Masonic authority says:-"After the death of Charles I., the Masonic corporations in England labored in secret for the