churches." (463.) In 1915, when the General Council met in Rock Island, Dr. Gerberding occupied the pulpit of the Presbyterian church. At Port Colborne, Can., on November 11, 1918, Rev. Knauff of the General Council fellowshiped with Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans in a united Thanksgiving service. (_Luth. Witness_ 1919, 14.) Dr. J. Fry in his _Pastor's Guide_: "A Lutheran pastor may officiate on any occasion, or perform a ministerial act in which ministers of other creeds take part, provided the occasion and circumstances are such as will not violate synodical order, nor compromise his confessional position." (84.) Again: "Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s, Christian Endeavor, etc., are rarely [sic!] to be recommended to our people, as they are generally conducted on 'new-measure' lines, and their influence is to make our members dissatisfied with Lutheran or churchly ideas and usages." (97.) It may be safely said that without the sanction of this species of unionism openly practised within the General Council, the Lutheran Merger of 1918 would have been an impossibility. And yet, this practise admits of but one construction: mutual acknowledgment. "When teachers and preachers exchange pulpits and chairs, it is an emphatic way of declaring, not their personal friendship, but their endorsement of each other's teachings; it is all the same as to infer that they are in accord in their essential teachings." (Editor of the _Presbyterian_.) ATTITUDE TOWARD LODGES. 126. Sound Lutheran Principles.--At its convention at Pittsburgh, 1868, the General Council made the following declarations with respect to secret societies: "1. Though mere secrecy in association be not in itself immoral, yet as it is so easily susceptible of abuse, and in its abuse may work, as it has often worked, great mischief in family, Church and State, we earnestly beseech all good men to ponder the question whether the benefits they believe to be connected with secret societies might not be equally reached in modes not liable to the same abuse. 2. Any and all societies for moral and religious ends which do not rest on the supreme authority of God's holy Word as contained in the Old and New Testaments; which do not recognize our Lord Jesus Christ as the true God and the only Mediator between God and man; which teach doctrines or have usages or forms of worship condemned in God's Word and in the Confessions of His Church; which assume to themselves what God has given to His Church and its ministers; which require undefined obligations to be assumed by oath, are unchristian, and we solemnly warn our members and ministers against all fellowship with, or connivance at, associations which have this character. 3. All connection with infidel and immoral associations we consider as requiring the exercise of prompt and decisive discipline, and after faithful and patient monition and teaching from God's Word, the cutting off the persistent and obstinate