| 276 To those who may be hesitating, waiting for the institution of the Order of Enoch, we state, that if the law concerning that order can not be filled by an association of men and money, for the transaction of every business enterprise in which honest men may spend their time and employ their means, legally organized according to the laws of the land, we believe that it can not be done; for this reason, if for none other: no business transaction in which money and goods are involved, and the owners liable to lose what may have been invested by them in such enterprise, can be prosecuted in any of the States, with fair assurance to those investing that they shall not suffer loss by irresponsible swindlers, unless there shall have been first a legal sanction to such business, by proper organization. No matter by what holy name it might be called, the name itself can not be a guarantee for the honesty of its members. If they are honest, legal restraints do them no wrong; if they are dishonest, they need them; and the legislatures have taken care that safeguards shall be provided.
The Order of Enoch is at best, when reduced to everyday practice, but an organized legal body, having church origin and membership. That is, divesting the Order of Enoch of all its legendary mistiness, it can but prove to be a legal method to carry out church designs.
Examine the matter as freely as you will the fact still remains, that the law is inoperative and the possible good to accrue therefrom is unrealized; not from any spoken design of the lawgiver that it should be so; but from a failure to comprehend, or an unwillingness to carry into effect what is comprehended.
Another reason why there can be no safe organization except in the provisions of the civil law is, there can be no by-law enacted by any number of men associated together for any definite object that can make the subscribers thereto honest. If their gospel covenant has failed to give birth and growth to honest principles, or to cultivate and enrich the native germ, association will, of necessity, fail to accomplish the beneficent work. To secure the honest men from the rogue in grain and to prevent the commission of "crime made venial by the occasion," through the exciting of cupidity by reason of opportunity, safe provisions are made in the laws enacted by those who are "wiser in their generation than the children of the kingdom," and of these provisions wise men should avail themselves, that the good they seek for others as for themselves may not be defeated.
That precedent for this may not be lacking, we cite, the organization and establishment of the church, "agreeably to the laws of our country." Also, "And thus all things shall be made sure according to the laws of the land." Again, "Therefore I, the Lord, justifieth you and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land."
In the article on marriage, the church affirms that the association in wedlock, the most sacred and beneficent of all copartnerships for the
(page 276) |
