Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 257
The Rosicrucians were and are a powerful, but unobtrusive,
Christian literary society. The Freemasons are, we believe,
the lower orders of the same; deists, but not necessarily Christians;
moral, but not necessarily religious; bent on benefiting
means humanitarian, and chiefly devot-
the human race by all
ing themselves to the development of the practical
side of life;
to architecture, printing, medicine, surgery, etc.; to the arts
and crafts, the habitations, the recreations of the million. It is
easy to see that, in the first instance, such societies might have
worked as part of one system. Whether or not they continue
in any degree so to work, we cannot positively say; but it seems to
the mere looker-on as if, once one, the society divided, subdivided,
and in its lower branches underwent such changes as to be not
only divergent, but, at the present day, different in character
and aim. We speak, hoping to be contradicted, and give, as an
instance, that the Freemasonry of Germany seems to differ very
much from that of the most respectable lodges of England,
being in some cases not only not Christian, but not even deistic;
on the contrary, persons professedly atheists are enrolled
amongst its members, and this miserable degradation of the
brotherhood has, we are told, unhappily extended to England
and America. Need it be said that to atheism and irreligion
is too frequently added the so-called socialism, which has, in
these later days, done so much to stir up discontent where content
reigned, destroying order and respect for authority, and
setting men by the ears who should be joined for mutual aid.
Of course, this is the bad and dark side of the question; there is
a very bright side, too, and researches (we cannot say inquiries,
for they are fruitless) encourage us to hope that there are signs,
either of the " drawing together " of opposite parties, for which
Bacon so earnestly strove, or else that the much-suppressed
Rosicrucians, the gallant little band who held together through
all the stormy times of the Puritans, the civil wars, the Restoration,
and the many subsequent troubles, are now rapidly multiplying
in number, increasing in power, and everywhere extending
their beneficent operations. " By their fruits ye shall know
them.