Chapter 11

We find institutions coming down to us from a date which the memory of man runs not to the contrary; indeed, some so old that the musty volumes of the long ago reveal not their origin. But simply the need of man for man would not entirely account for the duration of society in its ancient form. There must be still other underlying principles. There must be love and the acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man all along the way of life, or the family would go to ruin, society would dissolve, citizenship would not exist, states and principalities, kingdoms and powers would exist only as an idea in the brain. There would be no command to be our brother's keeper, no plighted vow that "The Lord be between thee and me, and between my seed and thy seed forever." Man would, as an individual, stand absolutely alone, like an atom dropped from the abyssmal depths onto this earth of ours. The little wild flower struggles through leafy mold, endures the tempestuous blast of winter, that when spring comes it may bloom to gladden the earth and scatter sweet incense all around. But without the cementing influence that runs like a thread all through society, man would not, could not, cast a sweet odor even on his own life, and dying would leave no benediction on the lives of others. And here the command comes, "Gather into thy quiver the lives and aspirations of others, that fitted to thy bow they may go forth scattering blessings by your help and by your kindly influence." So all great achievements have been based on great fundamental principles, and each principle has for its object the betterment of the conditions of mankind.

Truth is said to be eternal. It was just as true at the dawn of creation that the square described on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the square described on the other two sides, as it was when Pythagoras enunciated the theorem. "Thou shall not kill," is a law written by the Divine hand amid tempest and fire, but it stands. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," rings from the portals of heaven through the gates of humanity and its command will not go unheeded. They are all great fundamental truths. Do you observe that they live? Give heed also to the fact that they stand for a better condition among men, for more helpfulness and higher elevations. Truths enunciated, whether old or new, that live, only have one tendency, viz., to raise man to better conditions. Since the dawn of creation there has been a constant tendency to arise from a lower to a higher estate. Self-preservation, self-helps, self-culture have been the trend of thought and action. And this has not been altogether an effort in the individual for his own personal advancement, but for the advancement of the race. Men have undergone sacrifices, humbled and almost debased themselves, that the succeeding generation might live on a higher plane, physically, morally and spiritually, than they themselves enjoyed. I do not know of any act of humanity that calls forth louder praise than to so act and speak and do as that humanity shall not only catch the inspiration, but shall make material progress on a better understanding of surrounding conditions. Odd-Fellowship, in its essence, is no new institution. Its principles, practices and precepts have existed from the beginning of the race.

When Abraham stood with the churlish Lot on the line dividing the plains and highlands and said, "I pray thee let there be no contention between thee and me, if thou goest to the right hand I will go to the left, or, if thou goest to the left hand I will go to the right," he breathed the pure essence of unselfish devotion to the founder of a race. The acts of kindness shown by the traveler as the caravan plods its tortuous way across the sands of the desert; the mission of the wise men from the east in search of a Redeemer, all show forth that trait that you and I, my brother, try to emphasize while vowing devotion to the triple links. I said a moment ago that Odd-Fellowship, in its essence, was no new institution, and so it is not. As we know it in reality we have simply crystalized its workings. Instead of humanity, by its individual exertion, seeking to perform the task, we, as an organized band, have taken up the subject. What was paramount with individuals has become a living force with the multitude. What was before an invitation to duty has now become a command.

In seeking after friendship we do not court the beasts of the fields and the fowls of the air as the hermit does, but we seek man; not man, but men; not this little society or faction, but embrace all mankind in the issue. If we seek for love it is not love for pelf or power, but love for man and God. In truth we do not depend on the right conduct of individuals, but accept truth as it is written in nature's open book, emblazoned on the sky of hope that bends over us, and speaks in all the higher attributes of life. Time was when the inclination of men was to withdraw into clans. Ishmael stood in the desert by himself with his hand against every man. His true descendant, the Arabian sheik, draws his mantle about him, and surrounded by his little band withdraws within his own circle, and woe betide him who attempts to break through. But in this came no advancement, no progress. The Ishmaelite of old is the same today. Wherever progress and advancement has shown itself it is found that true regard for all mankind has been the cardinal doctrine. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Soon a broad catholicity of ideas seizes the multitude and man no more lives for himself than he lives for others. He who lives closest to the true heart of humanity lives nearest to God. Show me a man who lives for himself alone, and you will present almost a social outcast. Society tolerates him no more. In all the plans and calculations of life he is not numbered.

For two thousand years the command has come stronger and stronger for a closer unity on social lines and fraternal regard. Not to segregate but to crystalize and raise the status. The conditions of our social life are such that we can not live entirely to ourselves. The monk may withdraw himself from the gaze of the world, the anchorite may seek a hiding place in caves and dens, but they ignore entirely the demands of society upon them. If I were the only person in the world there would be no social problem. I would commune with myself and God and nature about me, without reference to my surroundings. There would be no social environment; no one to please, no one to whom I am indebted by nature or acquired obligation, and so I would remain. But we do not find the conditions to so exist. We must look squarely in the face the facts as they are. On all sides we are surrounded by a multitude who rightly make demands of us and which we can not ignore. If I were alone, I would do as the patriarchs of old did, erect a little altar of stone, rude and unsightly, and bow myself down before it and commune with Deity. But here we find that different types of men have different religious views, and different spiritual aspirations, and so churches must be erected; and while all tend to the same end, each hopes to reach it by a different route. I must respect all these views. Only one can be my view, but my social surroundings are such that all have rights which I am bound to yield some obedience to.

Again, if I were alone there would be no need of law, because both good and bad would be represented in my personality. There could be no murder, no crime, no punishment; but with all the manifold people with different tendencies, there must be law, or the social fabric would go to pieces by the strong trampling on the weak. Hence I must stand with reference to the law on the right side or the wrong side, and all humanity regardful of each other's rights must line up on one side or the other. In addition to our churchly ties and duties, we have family duties, and there begins the first of duty, first of government, first of obligations as citizens. And so I say we live in relation to those who surround us, and we can not live unmindful of them. We are touched by humanity everywhere, and walk elbow to elbow down the vale of life, supporting or destroying, and whether our pilgrimage be long or short we can not destroy the facts as they exist.

It must be seen with only a hasty glance that with the varying conditions of men, with their different mental dispositions, moral ideas and social status, that a crying demand comes all the time for some organization where men can unite on a common level--some place where a divergence of political or moral views do not bar an entrance, where the family ties remain sacred, and more sacred because of the organization. It seems that men groped about for just such an organization, and men's wants are necessities, and social and civil status might be brought to a common level with all who might be brought into the assembly. It is believed by Odd-Fellows that our organization furnishes just this want. All the life that a man wants outside of his spiritual life has its food here, and society and family and man's relations to man have been helped by it. I state it without fear of contradiction, that no order has been more potent for good than ours. It has been the hand-maiden of civilization wherever it has established itself; it has smoothed out the asperities of life for many, many individuals; it has defended character, protected life and limb, and stood as champion of all good between man and man and between God and man.

Every agency by which men are advanced, socially and morally, is an agency that guides government and state and individual up to a higher plane of development. Odd-Fellowship and Christianity go hand in hand. There is not a tenet of the order in any department that is repugnant to the highest development of Christianity. Indeed, it could not be so, for any lesson that is drawn from the three pillars of our order, Faith Hope and Charity, is a lesson pointing to the better life here and hereafter.

In the eighty years, last past, who can estimate the benign influence of the lives and actions of men, yea, on their eternal destinies, of the oft-repeated utterances pointing to the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man--a sermon that has been painted on the bow of God's eternal promise since Paul stood on the Mars Hill and preached this everlasting, unchangeable doctrine to the heathen world. When I think that since 1830 there has been expended for the relief of the members of this order and their families millions of dollars, in all right undertakings, and know that many hearts have ceased to ache, many cold feet covered, many a tear dried up, many a naked person clothed and many a hungry mouth fed, it rejoices my heart. I know also that such love could not spring from the hearts that were kindled by no spark of the Divine, but the lesson comes to you and to me, my brother and my sister, that he who opens not only the granary of earthly substance, but opens also the portals of the heart, and lets the Divine spark kindle into a blaze, will be thrice blessed in that day when the jewels of the eternity are made up. I do not desire to convey the impression that all our civilization is the outgrowth of Odd-Fellowship. We are too much inclined on such occasions as these to become mutual admiration societies and think that all the good things that we enjoy could not have been possible if our particular order had not existed. I do not wish to convey that impression. I only desire it to be understood that this order has been helpful in all right undertakings, and constantly endeavors to espouse the right and discard the wrong. It does not take the place of the church or the Sunday school or the prayer-meeting. It does not invade the pulpit, but only stands as an auxiliary to all these institutions that touch the better side of our natures. It inveighs against no religion or creed, and has no religious belief other than that we are brothers; nor does it encroach upon the domain of the politician. If Odd-Fellowship had more in it than the social and restraining influence one meets and is subjected to in the lodge-room, it would be sufficient inducement to organize and perpetuate lodges. No true Odd-Fellow crosses the threshold of his lodge-room but he feels he is treading on more sacred ground than the busy marts of trade, or in the office or counting house; he feels that he is coming home where dwells the purest principles of humanity--friendship, love and truth.

But there is more in the workings of this order than the social. Its object is to touch humanity in all its phases. To rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep. It sustains the living with friendship; causes man to stand firm in his integrity by the truth it teaches, and embrace the whole world with charity. The three links of friendship, love and truth mark the fuller and better development of this life, reaches beyond the grave, reaches beyond the vision, extends into the portals of the other and the better life. We may profess friendship, but that is an empty profession; our membership in a lodge is fruitless and our meetings produce no good results unless we have charity. It is but a small part that we should perform our mystic rights, typifying friendship, love and truth, but that we should so live them and act them that the touch of a member is the touch of a brother whose words sweeten the asperities of life and whose last offering is a tribute at the grave. We may be rudely brought back to the world with its pomp and show, its pageantry and vanity, by an emblem of mortality presented to us, but should we not ever have the spectre of mortality before our eyes? In the mad rush through life we forget the kinship of man to man. We are too often forgetful that the hand of a brother is reaching upward for succor. We forget that we are mortal, and the heart grows cold; our sympathies extend only to those around and nearest to us, forgetful that all mankind is our brother, and that he is especially our brother and friend who has mercy. But in this mad rush in life we are suddenly and almost rudely brought back to a full realization of our mortality, our helplessness, our emptiness, our nothingness, when we stand at the grave of our departed brother and reflect that here lies one who was born and had ambitions and died as we must die. His ambitions and hopes all went in the grave with him. The little grassy mound and the little marble slab is all that remains visible to tell us that he was our brother. Life would hardly be worth living; its struggles would be disastrous, its triumphs vain, empty bubbles, if the clods that fall upon the coffin and the sprig of evergreen tell the whole story of an Odd-Fellow. No, the very fact that we bury our departed brother teaches us that the grave is not the end of all. Though our brother dies he shall live in our hearts, in the flowers that we cast, in the precious memories that forever cluster around the links, the heart and the hand, the altar and the hour glass. When the supreme moment comes and the brother gathers his arrows into his quiver and fades from sight into the grave, we know that he has passed the portal into the land of the eternal, but the quiver and the arrows will ever stand as the badge of friendship. The heart may cease to beat, and the hand fall listless in death, yet the heart and hand will ever be emblems of love, and denote that when the hand of an Odd-Fellow is extended his heart goes with it.

The good Odd-Fellow has constantly before his mind the book of books. His first sight into a lodge-room catches sight of that divine missive to man. It is his solace in life, and its precepts his consolation in death. It ever stands to him as an exhaustless fountain of truth. On these three cardinal principles he lives and dies, and in the constancy of that life we venerate his memory and do him kindly offices. It is the nature of a man to be communistic. It is only the anchorite that withdraws himself from the societies of man and communes with himself and his God. All right-thinking men desire and enjoy the society of their kind and kindred spirits. You had as well lock the sane man in the felon's cell as to doom him to live without the society of his fellows. The family is the first and best society. Perhaps the church is next, which is only the human family on a larger scale, fitting and preparing the members for a community in that house not made by hands. Next to my church I prize the secret organization to which I belong, where the cardinal principles of our holy Christianity are taught. The deathless friendship of David and Jonathan teaches me that though I may live in the king's palace, be clothed in purple and fine linen every day, be in the line of regal succession, yet I do not live to myself.

I would herald broadcast that tenet of our order, "that we do for others as we would have others do for us, and that if I find my brother in distress, I must bind up his wounds, lift him from the quagmire of despond and set him on his feet." If any lesson stands out boldly before the mind of the Odd-Fellow it is truth. He finds it on his banner wherever he goes. Friendship is ephemeral. It lasts only through life. It may die, it will die. The grave ends it all. The silent messenger that comes to king and peasant alike, and causes the scepter of the monarch to be laid by the crook of the shepherd, ends our friendship. Love comes from God. God is love. It touches us at every point of our lives. From the cradle to the grave, every moment of our lives we are the objects of love to some one, and we love in turn. But human love must end. After life's fitful dream, the cares and vanities, the vexations and pleasures of life have no terror or concern for us, the love that thrilled our whole being will return to the source from whence it came. But truth will never die. It is the "imperial virtue." The heart may fail; it will fail, and the hand fall listless by the side. The arrow will fall after being shot into the air and never return, and the bow will be broken; the altar will be thrown down; the sand, grain by grain, run through the hour-glass, and the glass be shattered; the eye grow dim; the world roll up as a scroll and pass away; the hills may crumble and the pyramids melt with fervent heat; all the friendships will die and the love return to the Father that begat it, but truth will stand. It is indeed the imperial and the imperishable virtue. There, above the chaos and the confusion of time, it will stand to warn men from the wrong, and beckon them to do right.

Despite the glamor of the world that secret societies propagate a secresy of men's actions at the expense of truth and justice, it can not obtain in a lodge of this order. No man ever took upon himself the vows and studied the underlying motives, and practiced the lessons of the order, but he becomes a better citizen. If he has become a good husband and father, he becomes better in his domestic relations. If he has been charitable before, he becomes more so now. Men's weaknesses he looks upon as human frailties, until time and sense teach him that frailties have degenerated into positive perversity of character and baseness of heart. He will condemn falsehood and hypocrisy wherever found.

The object of religious organizations is to make men better and fit them for the life immortal. The object of government and its laws is to make and protect good citizens and repress vice. The object of this secret organization is to bind men more firmly together for mutual protection, for help and sustenance, to look after their families, and to be in a broad sense our brother's keeper. I would not be understood as placing a secret organization in place of the church, or in the place of a political government. By no means. Each has its own proper and particular sphere of action. No one in its actions and endeavors is inimical to the actions of the others. Each rests on its own peculiar foundation, but all dovetail together, and all make a harmonious whole. The man who is a good Christian is better by being a good Odd-Fellow. If both a good Christian and a good Odd-Fellow, he comes nearer being the typical citizen. If man reveres the law of this order, he will have more devotion to his church, his home, his flag and his country. I have no fault to find with those who do not believe in uniting with a secret organization, but I do object to any man inveighing against the objects and purposes, the ends and aims, of our order when he knows nothing about it. I do not expect every man to belong to my church, for men in their constitution and mental make-up can not see alike theologically. But I do accord to every member of every church the hope of getting to heaven if he lives up to the teachings of this particular sect. I believe in justification by faith and good works, but I have no use for a man who decries this doctrine when he never exercised a particle of faith nor did a good deed in his life. And so I would say to any one who thinks he stands on some lofty pinnacle and scents danger to the family tie, or church, or state, or society, because of the existence of secret orders, that he thinks and talks of something he knows nothing about. If I should desire to draw comparisons, I could say truthfully that during the last year this order gave more in charity and benefits to its members in Illinois than any religious denomination in the state. Look around your own community and see if it be not so. Think of the widow with tear-stained cheek, from whose door the wolf has been kept, because the charitable hand of our order was upon her. Count the orphan children of members of our order who have had shoes put on their feet, clothes put on their backs and food in their mouths. Enumerate the sufferers on beds of anguish, racked with pain and scorched with fever, who have had the nightly vigil of Odd-Fellows to smooth their pillows, dampen their parched lips and moisten their feverish brows. Watch the funeral pageant with its long train of mourners, brothers, dropping the evergreen in the grave, and doing the last sad offices, and then croak no more that secret societies are baneful to our civilization. He who thus sustains and soothes and encourages will be reckoned as twice blessed in that day when the secrets of all hearts are disclosed, and men are rewarded according to the deeds done in the body.