Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

452 DENIALS THAT MASONRY IS A RELIGION.
Sovereign;” (See pp. 476-7.) but none are baptized in
his name, nor do they celebrate His death. The bread
is eaten and the ‘vine drunk from human skulls, in
honor of devils, not Christ; and though Christ is called
sovereign, they trample on His law. Why, then, do
they pay him these empty compliments? Plainly, to
draw in ignorant, weak, and worldly Christians, and
this is what they achieve.
Nothing is more common, than the denial that Free.
masonry is a religion. This denial is made by many
Masons, and by all Jack-Masons, who bear the burdens
of the lodge, while claiming merit for not joining it.
But the many distinct avowals, that “Masonry is a religious
institution,” made by the highest Masonic authorities,
have been given in their own words. The
diabolical craft of the system appears in this; that
while “traditions,” which are man-made religions, crucified
“the Son of God,” they worship the cross, the
tool by which they tortured Him, to make believe they
were opposed to His crucifixion and torture, as if the
assassin should kneel before t~he dagger, with which lie
stabbed his victim. Njor is this all, or the worst:
claiming that they ~unite all religions in one, they renounce
and e’cclude the God and religion of the Bible,
as “bigoted” and narrow. They work only in Christian
hands, not in barbarous and savage ernintries; and they
denounce as “bigoted” the religion of the lands where
they work. And to crown their falsehood with felony,
they ste.il and falsely appropriate the principles aiid
fruits of the Gospel of Christ. The quotations which
we give below, not only prove that Masonry claims to be
a religion, but the true religion, and that its thistles pro.
duce figs, that its heathen ritual regenerates, sancti-
I
PROOF THAT MASONRY IS A RELIGION. 453
fies, and saves men. To begin with the Entered Apprentice:
“There he stands without our portals, on the threshold
of this new Masonic life, in darkness, helplessness and
ignorance. Having been ~vandering amid the errors,
and covered over with the pollutions of the outer and
profane world, he comes inquiringly to our doors, seeking
the new birth, and asking a withdrawal of the veil
which conceals divine truth from his uninitiated sight.
* * * There is to be not simply a change for the
future, but also an extinction or the past; for initiation
is, as it were, a death to the world, and a resurrection
to a new life.” Mackey’s Ritualist, pp. £~-8.
This is Satan’s travesty and burlesque of Bible conviction
of sin, and seeking religion. The Fellow Craft
is still compassing Mt. Sinai. Then follows the new
birth, or regeneration, not “by the Holy Ghost,” but
by the third, or Master’s degree:
“This has very properly been called the sublime degree
of a Master Mason, as well for the solemnity of the
ceremonies which accompany it, as for the profound
lessons of wisdom which it inculcates. The important
design of the degree is to symbolize the great doctrine
of the resurrection of the body, and the immortality
of the soul; and hence it has been remarked by a learned
writer of our Order, that the Master Mason represents a
man saved from Ihe grave of iniquity, and raised to the
faith of salvation.”—Mackey’s Ritualist, p. 109.
Then follows the Masonic lying-in, in which the
devil acts as midwife. The hoodwink falls, the lodge
claps and stamps, and the weary, badgered and befooled
candidate experiences such a ‘change of heart,”